How Auburn became the Houston Rockets of the NCAA Tournament

The Auburn Tigers are in the first Final Four in program history and they did it by taking a page out of the Houston Rockets playbook.

Just under three minutes remained in the first half of Sunday’s Elite Eight match-up between Kentucky and Auburn, a game that the Wildcats appeared to soundly control, leading 30-20—which was true to form, as Kentucky beat the Tigers twice during the SEC season. But then Jared Harper emerged: the junior guard drove past Jemerl Baker, stepping back calmly into a three-pointer and drawing the foul. The four-point play was just the Tigers’ third made three-point field goal of the game, but it was enough to jump-start the team’s offensive momentum, which eventually propelled the squad to a 77-71 win and the program’s first Final Four appearance.

The victory, much like Harper’s play, was a snapshot of the team’s season—more than a third of Auburn’s field goals versus Kentucky were from beyond the arc, which is actually a slight decrease from the Tigers’ seasonal output. Not only did Auburn take a high percentage of threes in 2019 (49.5 percent three-point field goal rate, eighth nationally), but Bruce Pearl’s squad connected at a high clip from deep (38.3 percent). But what’s so fascinating about the Tigers in the postseason is how the team married perimeter shooting and offensive efficiency.

Auburn has scored 1.18 points per possession through the Elite Eight, which leads Michigan State (1.12 PPP), Virginia (1.12), and Texas Tech (1.06), but none of the teams can change a game’s trajectory from the perimeter as Auburn can. Prior to the win against the Wildcats, 53 percent of the Tigers’ attempts were from deep, and per Jordan Sperber of Hoop Vision, Auburn, Purdue, and Villanova (2018) are the only three tournament teams since 2002 to attempt more threes than twos. The rate has since slipped—to 48.5 percent—but the team’s accuracy has remained just as torrid, converting 40.4 percent from beyond the arc.

And the impending threat of a three-point make fuels Auburn’s halfcourt offense: when Kentucky tried to blanket the three-point line, mimicking a strategy that countless opponents have tried in 2019, Harper and Bryce Brown, his backcourt teammate, capably exploited the perimeter close-outs, slicing through the half-court defense on a variety of angles before scoring they either scored the rim or dished to a diving big.

The team has so far scored 1.21 points per three and coupled with its interior attempts (more than a third of the shots have been in the paint, scoring 1.16 PPS), Auburn scores 1 PPS on more than three-quarters of its NCAA tournament offensive possessions.

That’s a staggering level of efficiency, especially when considering Auburn’s shot volume index, a statistic created by ESPN’s John Gasaway to better illustrate how well a team’s offense functions. The Tigers used 72 possessions per game the past four games—an increase from the regular season (67 possessions) and one that should indicate that more volume is the secret to the squad’s success, but Auburn does just the opposite. The team relies on quality versus sheer mass. The Tigers’ SVI, which factors in turnover percentage and offensive rebounding, in the postseason is 98.8, an improvement on its SVI during SEC play (96.1) but still lower than Virginia (102.7) and Michigan State (99).

Because the Tigers aren’t as gluttonous as its national semifinal opponent, the squad relies on judicious efficiency, combining an absurdly low turnover rate (12.8 percent) and a disregard of the offensive glass (23.8 percent). Still, possessing a low SVI could be a concern for some teams—indeed, Texas Tech is the only Final Four competitor with an SVI (93.9) lower than its Big 12 SVI (95.5), but Auburn’s three-point shooting negates any troubling offensive lulls: that 2.7 SVI margin is worth as much as 3.41 PPS. Simply put, no squad is scoring as effortlessly as Pearl’s Tigers.

And so far, no opponent has proven able to stop Auburn from achieving those objectives: in the SEC tournament, Auburn’s three-point rate was even higher (an unheard of 60.6 percent), and the team made 46 percent of those attempts.

Auburn is essentially a collegiate version of the Houston Rockets; the similarities between the two squads are obvious. Both don’t give the ball away, don’t crash the offensive glass, and each team’s offense is largely dependent on its ability to take and make threes. Or consider another comparison: those 2018 Wildcats. While the squad used five fewer possessions per game through the Elite Eight, Villanova’s SVI was 97.5, and the Big East team attempted 51 percent of its shots from deep, scoring 1.23 points per three. Auburn’s offensive flow mirrors that of Villanova’s, as both teams thrive when inverting the ball movement, which shifts the defensive attention to the paint before the ball rockets back to a waiting shooter on the perimeter.

As one coach told ESPN’s Jeff Borzello,

"One of the hardest things to do in college basketball is to defend with closeouts, especially when you’re in a scramble situation. They put you in so many scrambling situations, because all their guards can drive, they put you in constant rotation. Drive, draw second defender, pitch out, then make the second pass [to a shooter]. Their hockey-assist numbers are out of this world. It’s the one more pass that kills teams because they’re scrambling."

Watching Auburn is like watching basketball’s evolution, a game that now rewards perimeter shooting, spacing, and searching out the most efficient shot, and for all the credit that coaches like Mike Krzyzewski and John Calipari receive for embracing the realities of recruiting in the 21st century, Pearl and his staff have molded a team that is a reflection of the game’s changing nature.