Bruce Pearl breaks down struggles of Auburn's guard play

Auburn suffered its third loss in six games on Wednesday night as they fell 76-64 to Georgia in their first SEC road game. With not much going right for the Tigers in Athens, Bruce Pearl pointed at guard play as a big concern he has for his team at the moment.

Pearl broke down the poor performance of his guards, both offensively and defensively, following the loss in Stegeman Coliseum. He offered some solutions but he had plenty of criticisms for how they’ve been playing, specifically on the defensive end.

“We do the best we can in ball-screen coverage to try to help the guards get through. And our guards are having a hard time staying in front of people,” said Pearl. “You can go under and kind of build a wall a little bit. And maybe you do that against teams that really struggle to shoot the ball and let them shoot behind. That could be something we go to. It’s not something I’ve done before very often. But keeping guards in front of us has become an issue.”

“Our bigs do a pretty good job of helping them. But getting the guards back in front and competing to stay in front is an issue,” Pearl said.

When you look at the box scores from Georgia’s guards against Auburn, Terry Roberts and Kario Oquendo got loose. They combined for 43 points on 55% shooting on the night. As for the Tiger’s guards, Zep Jasper and Wendell Green Jr. combined for 12 points on 26.7% from the field. Their bench wasn’t much better either as KD Johnson, Allen Flanigan, and Tre Donaldson combined for 15 points on 33.3% shooting.

Overall, Pearl needs better out of those five as experienced, veteran guards both in college and in the SEC. That includes both ends of the floor as they’ll now look to correct some of those issues as they prepare to host Arkansas on Saturday night.