Auburn basketball lands in top half of The Athletic’s early SEC power rankings
After a down year that saw star players have both eligibility issues and injuries, Auburn is expected to be back as a major SEC title and NCAA Tournament contender in 2021-22.
While the squad will look brand new due to departures, both incoming and outgoing transfers and the arrival of the highest-rated signee in program history, the Tigers are bound to be both talented and deep with a lot of skill players coming off the bench.
The Athletic released its early SEC power rankings for next season and has Auburn in the sixth place.
Here’s what the publication has to say:
Bruce Pearl really had it rolling: SEC title in 2018, Final Four in 2019, unprecedented third straight 25-win season in 2020. Then came COVID and all the weird stuff last season brought with it, and the Tigers fell off a cliff. Five-star freshman Sharife Cooper only played a dozen (albeit dazzling) games and rookie sharpshooter Justin Powell only got in 10 before a concussion shut him down for good. Auburn was never really whole or clicked, and went 13-14 and finished 10th in the league. But there’s a very good chance that was an anomaly. Even losing Cooper and JT Thor to the NBA Draft, Powell to Tennessee and part-time starter Jamal Johnson to UAB, the Tigers look well-equipped to challenge the best teams in the SEC again.
Three starters returned: Flanigan (14.3 ppg, 5.5 rpg), Cambridge (8.9 ppg, 3.6 rpg) and Williams (10.9 ppg, 4.7 rpg). Two five-star big men were added: McDonald’s All-American Jabari Smith, who is top-five in the Class of 2021 and the highest-rated recruit to pick Auburn in the history of 247Sports, and 7-foot-1 North Carolina transfer Walker Kessler. Three backcourt transfers round it out: Green, an All-OVC point guard who averaged 15.8 points and 5.0 assists at Eastern Kentucky; Jasper, an All-CAA shooting guard who averaged 15.6 points and made 37 percent of his career 3-pointers at College of Charleston; and K.D. Johnson, a former top-100 recruit who averaged 13.5 points and made 39 percent of his 3s as a freshman at Georgia. That’s more than enough for a Pearl-coached team with a normal offseason and typical schedule to get back on track.
Here’s how the rest of the SEC rankings go down:
1. Kentucky
2. Tennessee
3. Arkansas
4. Mississippi State
5. Alabama
6. Auburn
7. LSU
8. Ole Miss
9. Florida
10. Texas A&M
11. Missouri
12. South Carolina
13. Georgia
14. Vanderbilt
