Bodda Getta Brew 10/16: Pearl's Pro Day

Today, we're looking at Auburn hoops and their impression on scouts at Pro Day.

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Bodda Getta Brew Crew
October 16, 2023

Good morning. Bruce Pearl knows that basketball season is right around the corner and he’s excited this season because he’s seen again and again in practice that this team is getting even stronger on offense going into next month’s season opener.

What else are we mixing into today’s Brew?

🏈 Road To Auburn: Marcus Harris and Jayson Jones
🏀 A deep dive into what went down on Pro Day
🐅 And much, much more!

🎥 WAREAGLE+

See the game the way coaches and players do. Go inside the WarEagle+ Film Room with Jason Campbell and get a deeper look at your favorite Auburn moments with current athletes and the Auburn football team.

📈 STOCK UP

🔼 The Call Is Coming From Inside the House. With scouts from all but a handful of NBA teams taking notes, Auburn held its annual Pro Day Thursday at Neville Arena.

"This is for the kids," said Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, equating the opportunity to business students interviewing with Fortune 500 companies. "These pro scouts are interviewing our players and laying eyes on them personally."

For the scouts' benefit, the Tigers conducted shooting drills similar to an NBA individual workout before an officiated 20-minute scrimmage. The large turnout of NBA front office personnel indicates how Pearl, in his 10th season, has elevated Auburn's program.

When addressing how far the program has come and what an event like this might have looked like a decade ago, Pearl said, “We may not have gotten many guys to show up."

For Auburn center Johni Broome, Pro Day marked his latest chance to impress the pros after participating in the NBA Combine over the summer.

"It's a great opportunity to showcase our skills," Broome said, sharing his advice to teammates less accustomed to competing before so many NBA influencers.

More Bodda Getta Brew headlines to brighten up your morning ⬇️

🔼 An Impenetrable Line. In the fall of 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, Marcus Harris was a redshirt freshman at Kansas, more than 800 miles from his hometown of Montgomery. Jayson Jones was even further away. He spent the 2020 season as a freshman at Oregon, more than 2,500 miles from where he grew up in Calera, Alabama.

This season, the duo has started every single game next to each other on the defensive line at Auburn. Both are back in their home state and making the most of their opportunity.

But neither Harris nor Jones would undo the past and their decision to leave home.

“That helped me grow up and become a young man,” Harris said. “Being that far away helped me live on my own and become my own person and find new friends and people I never knew from different walks of life and different cultures. It just opened my mind up to different things and how big the world really is.”

“I’m glad I went out to Oregon,” Jones said, echoing that sentiment. “First of all, I loved Oregon. There was nothing wrong with Oregon. I grew up. I had to grow up because I was living by myself. That really helped me, especially coming back home and being very dependent. When I came back here, it was like, ‘OK, I’m closer to home, but you know how to operate by yourself.’”

It was the road less traveled for Harris and Jones coming out of high school, and, interestingly enough, that road led them both back to Auburn, where they are now thriving on and off the field.

Jones arrived on the Plains in 2022, a year after Harris, but the 6-foot-6, 338-pound nose tackle has started every game for the Tigers in that span and has formed one of the SEC’s more intimidating tandems up front alongside Harris.

“I appreciate him,” Jones said. “He doesn’t know this, but I watch him, and I see what he does because he does a lot of things right. That’s the kind of person you want on your team.”

“The legacy I want to leave here is not so much for football,” he went on to say. “It’s for the type of person I am. Jayson Jones did it right. Be like him. He went to class, never got in trouble, did the right stuff on the field. When he messed up, he knew he messed up, and he fixed it the next play. I just want to be known for that.”

🔼 Onward and Upward. A slow start and a raucous home crowd in Death Valley proved costly for Auburn in No. 22 LSU's 48-18 victory Saturday.

"Difficult night for us," Auburn coach Hugh Freeze said. "They beat us every way you could. We had no answers. We've got to go back to work and hopefully get better. This will test us. The only way to get out of this funk is to work hard. To do that, you've got to have the right attitude, be able to put the past behind, but at the same time own what we're doing."

Trailing 20-7 at the half, Robby Ashford threw deep down the middle to Brandon Frazier for 39 yards, Auburn's longest gain of the game and Frazier’s first career touchdown. This set Alex McPherson up for his 38-yard field goal, pulling the Tigers within 10 points early in the third quarter.

Jay Fair’s highlight-reel-worthy catch of Payton Thorne’s pass netted 32 yards to help Auburn drive 84 yards in 10 plays, scoring on the first play of the fourth quarter on Ashford's 3-yard touchdown pass to Frazier.

Despite some of these positive plays, LSU put the game out of reach with a 75-yard, 11-play drive that consumed 6 minutes and 5 seconds, taking a 41-18 lead on Logan Diggs' 5-yard touchdown run.

The Tigers (3-3, 0-3) return to Jordan-Hare Stadium next Saturday to host No. 13 Ole Miss at Jordan-Hare Stadium at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN and the Auburn Sports Network.

🤔 TIGER TRIVIA

Ole rivalry. The Auburn-Ole Miss rivalry spans just under a century and 47 meetings between the two of them. In that span, Ole Miss’ longest streak of wins was three-in-a-row in 1949, 1951, and 1952.

Do you know the Tigers’ longest-streak in this series?

Think you got it? Scroll down to the bottom of this email for the answer!

🐅 ONE BIG THING

No spin needed. It was a spectacular day for singles on the Plains, with four Tiger wins in the main draw. Bill Blaydes and Will Nolan are onto the Sweet 16!

📬 FORWARDED BY A FRIEND

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📅 THE WEEK AHEAD

Monday 10/16

🎾 Men’s Tennis @ ITA Southern Regional Championships

🎾 Women’s Tennis @ ITF 80K

🏌🏽‍♂️ Men’s Golf Fallen Oak Collegiate Invitational

🏌🏽‍♂️ Men’s Golf MartinFed Invitational

Tuesday 10/17

🎾 Men’s Tennis @ ITA Southern Regional Championships

🎾 Women’s Tennis @ ITF 80K

🏌🏽‍♂️ Men’s Golf Fallen Oak Collegiate Invitational

🏌🏽‍♂️ Men’s Golf MartinFed Invitational

Wednesday 10/18

🎾 Women’s Tennis @ ITF 80K

Thursday 10/19

🎾 Women’s Tennis @ ITF 80K

⚽️ Soccer @ Florida @ 5:00 p.m. CT

Friday 10/20

🎾 Women’s Tennis @ ITF 80K

🏌️‍♀️ Women’s Golf Stanford Intercollegiate

🐎 Equestrian vs. Georgia @ 3 p.m. CT | Live Results

🏐 Volleyball vs. Missouri @ 6:00 p.m. CT on SEC Network | Live Video 

Saturday 10/21

🎾 Women’s Tennis @ ITF 80K

🏌️‍♀️ Women’s Golf Stanford Intercollegiate

🏈 Football vs. Ole Miss @ 6 p.m. CT

Sunday 10/22

🎾 Women’s Tennis @ ITF 80K

🏌️‍♀️ Women’s Golf Stanford Intercollegiate

🏐 Volleyball vs. South Carolina @ 1:00 p.m. CT on SEC Network | Live Video 

🥎 Softball vs. Gulf Coast State College @ 2 p.m. CST

🥎 Softball vs. Wallace State Community College @ 4:30 p.m. CST

⚽️ Soccer vs. LSU @ 4:00 p.m. CT

🎉 TRIVIA ANSWER

Answer: 9 games!

Auburn and Ole Miss played each other nine times from 1971 and 1991 and won each and every time.

Fun Fact: Auburn also holds a pair of six-game streaks that went from 1993-1998 and 2016-2021.

🐅 Have a great Monday, y’all