Auburn basketball's Bruce Pearl is pushing the right buttons at point guard
Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl will be the first to admit it: His point guards are a couple of puppies.
Not in their demeanor — Tre Donaldson is a former football player who originally planned to be a two-sport athlete on the Plains, and Aden Holloway didn't earn his five-star distinction coming out of high school for no reason — but in terms of their experience. Donaldson is a sophomore who played 10.5 minutes per game last season, and Holloway is a freshman.
The duo got off to a torrid start together, combining to average 18.1 points and 7.4 assists in nonconference play, and their assist-to-turnover ratio was just under 3.1. Neither was playing like a game-breaker individually, but the pairing was Frankensteined into a single PG that provided elite production for 40 minutes.
Then SEC play began, and their plays dipped at different times. Holloway fell into a shooting slump that lasted more than a month, and Donaldson recently went 17 days without making a basket.
Auburn needed more from its floor generals. It's starting to get it.
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Holloway, after falling out of the starting lineup for a seven-game stretch due to his shooting struggles, dropped nine points and five assists in a 27-point road win over Missouri on Tuesday. He also was tasked with defending an experienced back court of Nick Honor and Sean East II.
It wasn't all Holloway's doing, but Honor and East combined to shoot 25%.
"I thought Aden played great," Pearl said. "I thought he ran the club really well. I thought he made good decisions. He sat down and guarded, and it's hard to guard Missouri's guards."
Donaldson averaged 6.9 points and 3.3 assists in the seven-game experiment with him as a starter. The move back to the bench was less about his production and more about the team's overall fit. Pearl has previously noted how Holloway seems to work better when paired with All-SEC center Johni Broome, and Donaldson excels when on the floor with backup big man Dylan Cardwell.
It makes sense, given Donaldson's playmaking abilities. Broome can go get a bucket himself, and Holloway can work off of that as a floor spacer. Cardwell is a rim-runner, and Donaldson is a perfect teammate to throw him lobs as he barrels toward the basket.
The Holloway-Broome combination has a net rating of +25.5 this season. That ranks in the 98th percentile among all two-man groups in the country, per College Basketball Analytics. Donaldson and Cardwell sit at +24.2.
Donaldson dropped six assists in a win against Mississippi State on Saturday, and he had two more at Missouri while he also added nine points and helped defensively to keep Honor and East in check. He's got 11 dimes since he went back to the bench, and he's turned it over once.
Auburn has the SEC's third best scoring defense at 68.2 points allowed per game, is beginning to shoot the lights out — the Tigers have made 44.4% of their 3-pointers over their last four games — and the production at point guard is on the rise.
That's seemingly a recipe for success, and it couldn't have come at a better time — March.
"I think that, at this time of the year, we're no longer playing for roles and playing time and minutes; who's starting and who's not," Pearl said after beating the Bulldogs. "That's not what we're playing for. We're playing to win. ... And I think our point guard play has improved."
Richard Silva is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at rsilva@gannett.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @rich_silva18.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Auburn basketball seems to have figured out its issue at PG
