Morning reads: Auburn's Johni Broome might be the SEC's best transfer, new baseball rankings and more

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Baseball falls one spot in latest D1Baseball Top 25

The Auburn baseball team fell from No. 19 to No. 20 in the latest D1Baseball Top 25 rankings after losing two of three games to No. 4 Arkansas over the weekend.

Tennessee remains No. 1 after losing their first SEC series at Kentucky. Texas A&M is up to No. 10, LSU lands at No. 17, and Vanderbilt is back in the rankings at No. 24. Auburn won series against all three of of A&M, LSU and Vanderbilt, by the way.

Auburn’s RPI fell from No. 4 to No. 10.

The Tigers are still in position to host a Regional, but they can’t afford any more falters with two series remaining.

Did Auburn land the league’s best transfer?

CBS Sports updated their transfer portal rankings in college basketball, and former Morehead State forward Johni Broome was elevated to No. 7 on their list. The Auburn signee recently chose Bruce Pearl’s program over Florida and first-year coach Todd Golden. Currently, there isn’t a player ranked higher on the list that’s headed into the SEC.

Broome is a monster shot blocker who finished third nationally with 131 blocked shots this season, putting him ahead of players like Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren, Duke’s Mark Williams, Arizona’s Christian Koloko and KC Ndefo of Saint Peter’s. But he’s also a skilled player in the post who came up with big offensive performances in the OVC Tournament title games over the past two seasons. He will be big in helping Auburn replace Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler.

No. 8, guard Mark Sears is transferring from Ohio to Alabama. No. 10, forward/center K.J. Williams is transferring from Murray State to LSU. And Nos. 23 and 24 are brothers, forwards Makhel and Makhi Mitchell are transferring from Rhode Island to Arkansas, to name the other top additions in the SEC.

Non-conference scheduling innovation coming to CBB?

According to CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander, 22 of Division I’s 32 conferences have been receptive to an ambitious scheduling concept that would introduce back-to-back non-league games played just a few weeks prior to Selection Sunday.

Norlander writes:

The selling point of these out-of-conference matchups would be to pit projected NCAA Tournament candidates, in addition to bona fide bubble teams, against each other. What’s more, there would be an array of games between schools fighting to improve their NCAA tourney résumés.

Here’s how the first-of-its-kind concept would work: For one week in February, a slew of leagues would pause their conference schedules and instead have all their members play two nonconference opponents. The model would have every team involved play one home game and one away game, with the majority of those games happening three days apart — many on Wednesday and Saturday — with the window commencing after Valentine’s Day. 

The matchups would be decided by an algorithm that would ensure the best teams play the best teams. The games wouldn’t be determined until the end of January. Think of it like a mini-Selection Sunday within the regular season. You could even build a television show around it. How fun would that be?

Former Florida QB lands at Arizona State

Former Florida quarterback Emory Jones is heading to Arizona State, ESPN first reported. Jones will be immediately eligible for the Sun Devils, and he offers the chance to upgrade a quarterback room that’s viewed as the weakest in the Pac-12 Conference. He has two seasons of eligibility remaining.

Jones enters a quarterback race that lacks an established incumbent after Jayden Daniels transferred to LSU less than a month after entering the NCAA transfer portal in February. Neither ASU quarterback projected to compete for the starting job — Paul Tyson or Trenton Bourguet — has started a college game.