AUBURN — The Auburn Tigers men's basketball program announced last week that it would travel to Greenville, S.C., for an exhibition game on October 27 to take on the Furman Paladins.
Although head coach Bruce Pearl's squad is ranked No.11 in the preseason AP poll, Pearl sees this as a great opportunity to find out what his team is all about.
"If you were to break out my 'four days before the first game press conference' over the last six or seven years, I imagine I'd say the exact same thing," Pearl said. "We don't know what we don't know, and we're going to find out a lot about ourselves in the next week."
What Pearl does know is that he brought in an influx of talent through the high school and transfer portal ranks, and he will be counting on those guys to make an impact on Sunday. Pearl has mentioned throughout the offseason that there will be a rotation of guys playing at point guard, one of those being Furman transfer JP Pegues.
"He's really been focused and worked his way through the learning curve, continuing the learning curve of how we guard, what we play, trying to get an understanding of all the different positions, Pearl said. "He is like a lot of my point guards, a really good scoring point guard. JP can score. He can really shoot the basketball. He can get downhill, makes pretty good plays, makes pretty good decisions. He's a smart player. He's a really solid defender. He's worked hard on his defense."
Pearl has mentioned throughout the offseason that Denver Jones, who spent most of his time at the two-spot last season, is going to get some valuable minutes with the ball in his hands this year and that true freshman Tahaad Pettiford will rotate in-and-out at both guard spots as well.
"We will play Denver, we will play JP, and we might even play Tahaad a little bit at that point guard position," Pearl said of what the point guard rotation will look like against Furman.
Pearl returned an experienced backcourt this year headlined by All-American big man Johni Broome. Broome is expected to get some run at the four spot with Dylan Cardwell playing the five, although it's not something Pearl expects to happen often. The Tigers' game against Furman will allow Pearl to see what that combination will look like on the floor.
"Johni is going to continue to be an inside out player, both offensively and defensively. And we will have Dylan and Johni on the floor at the same time for periods of time during the course of the game. And that would be new from last year," he explained.
Pearl mentioned at last week's Tipoff at Toomer's event that Georgia Tech transfer Miles Kelly was battling an illness and should be ready to get back to action soon but is not expected to play against Furman on Sunday.
"Miles Kelly has not practiced in about a week-and-a-half due to some illness. And he's not injured, but he has some illness that, it's this kind of illness that it just takes some time to recover from. I'm hopeful that we get Miles back next week," he outlined.
The Tigers' game on Sunday will not be televised but will be open to the public. Tickets can be purchased on Ticketmaster, and all proceeds will benefit the Friends of Cleveland Park and the City of Greenville’s park restoration projects.
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