'Sum of our parts': Bruce Pearl's scout team plays important role in Auburn's success

AUBURN – It was Monday afternoon, two days before Auburn was set to host last-place Georgia inside Auburn Arena.

Maybe the Auburn players were starting to overlook Georgia with Kentucky looming on Saturday, maybe it was something else, but the Tigers’ scout team dominated. Time and time again, the scout team was executing, scoring and defending. Jabari Smith was frustrated. K.D. Johnson was frustrated. The rest of the starters and key role players didn’t have many answers.

Chris Moore was dominating on offense and on the glass. Moore was unstoppable. Wendell Green Jr. even said from the bench in frustration, “we’re going to make this guy an All-American?”

“We killed them. Write that down,” Babatunde Akingbola said. “To me, sometimes they are playing and we have to get at them. They’re tired and I get that, but we have to push them.”

Akingbola and the rest of the scout team didn’t let the starters live that practice down, but their teammates soon got their revenge.

“We were talking smack all day. K.D. didn’t like that. Jabari didn’t like that. And the next practice, they killed us,” Akingbola said. “Stuff like that helps us grow. Sometimes they want to chill and relax, and if we bring it every practice, they don’t have time to relax.”

Walk-on guard Chandler Leopard from Athens, Alabama remembers it well.

“There was a practice where we came out and we were killing them,” he said. “And then Bruce got on them and made them run. If we come out strong, it’ll make them play better and be ready for the game.”

The following night, Auburn scored 52 first-half points on their way to a 23-point conference win. A game in which Bruce Pearl called a “trap game” was anything but that, in large part due to a scout team that wouldn’t let their teammates rest on their laurels.

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The Tigers’ scout team

The scout team of the No. 1-ranked team in the nation consists of Leopard, Michael Whitmore, Chase Maasdorp, Ty Cressman, Carter Sobera, Preston Cook, and often times Akingbola and Moore. Every practice, they arrive an hour early to learn plays of the upcoming opponent. Whichever assistant coach responsible for the scouting report will coach the scout team up on offensive and defensive plays and sets, and all this happens while their teammates are watching film and preparing for practice. By the time practice starts an hour later, the scout team must be well versed in the plays and sets the opponent plans to deploy.

Assistants Ira Bowman, Steven Pearl, Wes Flanigan, Chad Prewett, Mike Burgomaster and Ian Borders are extremely comprehensive in their ability to prepare a scouting report.

“We try and come in and learn all the plays we can, and execute them to the best of our abilities,” Cook said. “We try to give them good looks and get them ready for the game. It’s definitely challenging. We’re leaning offense, defense, out-of-bounds plays, special plays — you just have to lock in. We play hard.”

Simply learning an entirely new offense and defense in that short period of time would be impressive, but that’s not enough. The scout team then has to execute the action with confidence and energy, so the starters and key contributors can get the best look possible for preparation of the game ahead. It’s awfully impressive, and it’s anything but easy. It’s a thankless job, but Pearl is well aware of the scout teams’ impact on winning and losing.

“We’re a sum of our parts, including that scout team,” Pearl said. “Those guys will tell you: if we don’t have a good day at practice and they don’t execute, and they don’t guard us the way the opponent will guard us, I will hold them to account. They’ve had a lot to do with our winning, and we appreciate them, but they could also have something to do with our losing, if they don’t get us ready.”

Leopard is a fantastic shooter from Athens, Alabama, often times looking like a regular Jimmy Chitwood in practice. Whitmore is an incredibly quick point guard that played high school basketball with Walker Kessler. Cook calls Auburn, Alabama home, and if not for the chance to walk on minutes from where he grew up, he’d be playing scholarship basketball somewhere.

“One of the best shooters in the SEC is on our scout team in Chandler. Mike Whitmore is the slipperiest point guard you can have on a scout team that’s not on scholarship. Lior Berman, he used to be scout team. Preston has a 42-inch vertical. It goes on and on,” Maasdorp said.

Maasdorp’s role is different than some of the others. The senior from Florida had never seen an Auburn basketball game before he walked on four years ago. The first game he watched was inside Auburn Arena from the bench. His first season was Auburn’s Final Four run, his second season was a second-place finish in the SEC regular season, and for his final season, he’s part of the first-ever top-ranked basketball team in program history.

“Every year since the Final Four, the scout team has gotten better. You can ask any coach and they’ll tell you,” Maasdorp said. “My role is slightly different than most of the scout team guys. I’m vocal, leadership oriented. The big thing I focus on is encouraging the guys to be sharp. It’s an interesting role being a walk-on and being naturally vocal, because you don’t want to overstep. Some guys receive it differently than others. A big part of what I do, I’m always looking for opportunities to say something that’s life giving. Let’s step it up and do better.”

Maasdorp even joked about the overall importance of this year’s scout team.

“This year, we have a very good scout team,” he said. “Some people say that’s why we’re number on in the country. You can leave that to the Twitter fans to argue.”

There are days the scout team wins. There are days they lose by 30. Those days are tougher, Maasdorp says, but Pearl and his assistants keeps them motivated.

“Bruce harps on it all the time. We have to be sharp,” Maasdorp said. “Sometimes it can feel not as important, but Bruce regular reminds us it’s a very important part of the success we’ve had. We’ve seen over our four years the impact it can make. There’s years that our scout team has been better than others and we can see how that makes a difference in preparation.”

‘C-Mo’ and ‘Stretch’ play vital roles

To supplement the scout team, often times you’ll see Moore and Akingbola moving from learning the game plan with the key players, to running scout team to provide the best looks possible.

“We’ve rotated some of our other guys onto that team because quite frankly, our ability to prepare is vital. Our bench has been so valuable,” Pearl said.

In most games, Moore is around the 10th player off the bench. Moore possesses talent, but with Pearl’s deepest team he’s fielded at Auburn, and maybe ever, Moore often times is the odd man out. He plays an interesting role of capable of logging serious minutes against SEC opponents, but also being an incredibly important player on the scout team.

“Every practice, he’s crazy,” Whitmore said. “It feels like I’m playing with LeBron. It looks like he’s on a mission. C-Mo is just a hard-nosed guy. Anything he’s competing in, he’s trying to win.”

“C-Mo,” as his teammates call him, is a former four-star recruit. Moore scored 11 points in Auburn’s upset of top-25 Missouri one season ago, and added 16 points against Louisiana Monroe earlier this season. “I attack practice with the mindset that I need to make my teammates better. I need to put my teammates in position to succeed. Being that guy that can help them on both sides of the ball,” he said.

“I look at it like a game scenario, and I make it a game scenario by attacking. I talk trash and if I score, I give them a hard time about it. They can get a better understanding of what it’s going to be like.”

And then there’s “Stretch” Akingbola, who despite limited playing time in his three years at Auburn, is unquestionably one the most vocal leaders on the team. Akingbola plays a vital role in defending Kessler during practice, as not many teams have an extra 6-foot-10 1/2 player off the bench they can throw in to defend one of the best centers in the country.

“First of all, we have to bring it every practice. There are no lazy days,” Akingbola said. “We have to know our plays and their plays. BP might put in eight new plays, then we have to know 20 plays from Coach (Mike) Burgomaster, so we just have to do a good job.”

Scout team hard work turns into Auburn success on the court

There isn’t a better feeling than when the scout team sees offensive and defensive action they ran in practice defended or scored upon by Auburn’s key players on game day.

“I feel like I helped out. It makes me feel good. I can contribute in some way to the team,” Leopard said.

Cook added, “It’s awesome. If we see action they’re running or we can help them on the court, and we can relay it to them, we can mess up their play and help our guys out.”

Whitmore remembers the practices leading into the Alabama game well. He and Leopard played the parts of Jahvon Quinerly and Jaden Shackelford. During the game at Alabama, Quinerly and Shackelford combined to hit only four threes in 18 attempts.

“There’s some games that we can watch and know exactly what’s going on. Those, we feel the best. I’ll watch those games and know what they’re going to run,” Whitmore said. “You can tell when our team is so locked into the scout that another team can’t get going. That Alabama game, we played so well, and Quinerly and Shackelford didn’t really play well. That was one of the most meaningful games to me.”

Whitmore plays a critical role. He’s the scout team’s only point guard. His practices are spent going up against K.D. Johnson, Green Jr., Zep Jasper, Allen Flanigan or Devan Cambridge. Championship basketball is often times displayed when guard play is at its best, so needless to say, Whitmore’s role in preparing Auburn’s guards to defend and attack on offense is really significant.

“The way those guys get after you, it’s exhausting,” Whitmore said. “I try to not back down and keep the pressure on, and I try and compete the best I can. I try and go at them.”

In preparation for Missouri, Moore played Kobe Brown – one of Missouri’s best players. Brown averages 14 points per game, but against Auburn, he only managed eight.

“I played Kobe Brown in practice. I was telling Jabari in practice, ‘this is what he does.’ He’ll attack right, he’s a big body, and I’m telling Jabari and Jaylin Williams what he’s going to do,” Moore recalls. “In order for us to win, we had to stop one of their best players.” And Auburn most certainly did, as Smith and Williams earned praise from Pearl after the game for their efforts on Brown.

Added pressure of preparing the No. 1-ranked team

As if there wasn’t enough pressure being a member of the scout team, knowing you are the only preparation the starters and key contributors will face before the game. Now, throw in the fact that Auburn is ranked first and on a 17-game winning streak. If the pressure on players like Smith and Kessler is ratcheted up, it’s also ratcheted up on the scout team to continue to prepare at a high level.

“I come in every day this is a chance to go against the number one team in the country. I size myself up every day with these guys. In practice, we’re competing,” Whitmore said.

Leopard added, “this year it means a little more. Bruce is saying make sure y’all do good and make sure y’all run it right, so we get a good look for the players. Bruce has definitely been on us the last few weeks. I don’t want them to lose a game and we didn’t do a good job. I guess there’s more pressure.”

No. 1 Auburn hosts Alabama on Tuesday night. The season is just getting into the dog days of February. After the game against Alabama, the SEC schedule will only be half way over. In other words, there’s still much basketball to be played.

However, Akingbola believes this Auburn team has the chemistry and mental makeup to accomplish big things, if they keep their mind right.

“This team, we have good players. We don’t have a selfish player. It’s not one person every single night,” Akingbola said. “You see what we can do on defense — it’s going to be the depth for us. That’s why I believe in this team. Last year, we had a rough year, there was a lot going on. This year, we have a lot of players. That’s why we’re winning. We have a great opportunity, we just have to keep playing hard every game.”