My Initial Thoughts on Auburn Basketball and Jahvon Quinerly's Late Entrance into the Portal

This is my first official post. There’s not much going on in my main sports of interest (basketball and football) right now so there isn’t much to talk about, but I’m here anyways. I’m looking forward to the start of the NBA summer league so I can talk about some of the rookies and their performances.

I’ll start by talking about my thoughts on Auburn Basketball and their upcoming season. I am pretty optimistic about what we have going on. Portal season may have seemed a bit underwhelming, but I am a big fan of the pieces we added. Denver Jones will help fix some of our shooting woes from recent seasons, and I think he will be a guy that we can go to late in games to get a much-needed bucket. Chad-Baker Mazara, who I will refer to as CBM from now on, is another good shooter that brings length as well as experience in the NCAA tournament. I have heard good things about Chaney Johnson and his performance in the first month of practice. I haven’t seen much tape on him, but it looks to me like he will add athleticism and rebounding. We struggled heavily with rebounding at times last year, so we could definitely use some help on the glass. Aden Holloway is by far the most exciting addition. He is an elite shooter that is great at controlling pace and facilitating, and he has performed very well at a high level of high school basketball. I have no doubt that he will step in and make a big impact at this level.

Auburn has some solid returning pieces as well. Johni Broome is predicted to be one of the top centers in the SEC next year, and potentially in all of college basketball. I also believe that Tre Donaldson will ride the momentum that he gained in the tournament and make a big leap this year. He stepped up and made some big shots against Iowa and Houston, and I hope that will give him the confidence he needs to take his game to the next level. Other vets like Jaylin Williams, KD Johnson, and Dylan Cardwell all have contributed important minutes in the past and will continue to contribute this year. It’s hard to gauge how this team will finish in the SEC this year since we don’t know too much about the new additions, but based on what I’ve seen and heard, I think we have potential to finish top 5 in the SEC.

Jahvon Quinerly surprised everyone by entering the transfer portal yesterday. Many teams already have set their roster, so I was shocked that he would enter this late in the offseason.

So what are you losing if you’re an Alabama basketball fan? You’re losing some very high high’s, and some very low low’s. Quinerly has had some incredible performances in the past, even winning the SEC tournament MVP during the Covid season. However, he has been streaky. There were a few games where he was very inefficient, turning the ball over and not shooting well. There were also games where he would score 20 plus points, including at home against Auburn. Alabama will miss performances like that, but certainly won’t miss the inconsistency. If I’m a bama fan, I’m not really concerned about the move. I think quinerly wants to be “the guy” on his team, and he wasn’t going to be able to do that with Alabama’s depth at the guard position. Early contenders for quinerly appear to be Memphis and Miami. Alabama has apparently already reached out to Joe Toussaint, a point guard that averaged 9 at West Virginia last year. He would be a solid replacement for Quinerly.