After a losing season, Auburn basketball recruited a new roster on Zoom. How it landed each player

GREENVILLE, S.C. — In the lobby of Auburn basketball's Neville Arena, assistant coach Steven Pearl was struggling to describe the specific challenges of recruiting players online. In a few days, Auburn would be NCAA Tournament-bound with a reassembled roster. The five vital newcomers were all reeled in via Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic that halted in-person recruiting through June 1, 2021.

As Pearl paused, point guard Wendell Green Jr. emerged from the weight room.

"Got any stories from our Zoom calls?" the coach asked. Green shrugged.

"He was super quiet on Zoom," Pearl said, beginning to smirk. "And then he gets here and he won't shut up."

The banter was revealing, though. It's a small miracle that Auburn (28-5) — after a losing season — won the SEC and entered March Madness as a No. 2 seed with a roster so short on returners. After the pandemic dead period, well-acquainted teams were advantaged over rebuilt ones. Auburn's coaching staff didn't know most of the players' personalities until after they had committed, signed and arrived on campus.

"Honestly, the Zoom stuff was way more basketball-oriented than relationship building," Pearl said. "It's more like, 'All right, get to it. Let's talk about how you fit here; how you'll be used here.' You get a hard read on kids. They're looking at you on a computer screen. How do you really know what their personality is?"

A vision for the 2021-22 team held Auburn together. Pearl explained how the Tigers landed their five newcomers under strenuous circumstances.

Jabari Smith

Smith was no secret. The Atlanta-area five-star was ranked No. 7 overall in the class. But Auburn's coaches went a year without seeing him play in person before he arrived. One of Smith's last non-AAU games Steven Pearl watched was Sandy Creek's state semifinal against Walker Kessler's team.

The gangly 6-foot-10 forward was polite and reserved on Zoom. "He was easy to talk to," Pearl said, "but I didn’t realize, like, how big of a (smack)-talker he was until he got on campus."

The conversations moved swiftly to basketball, where Auburn had a specific vision and a precedent. Chuma Okeke and Isaac Okoro had played the four in recent seasons. Both were first-round draft picks whose ceilings had risen at Auburn. "We could sell what we did with those guys and how good those guys were — and obviously, Jabari was a more supreme talent at that age than those guys were," Pearl said. "We told him, 'This is where you’re going to get your shots. This is how we invert our four and five.' We showed him a lot of different ball-screen looks."

There was one primary new idea the staff introduced: setting up Smith in the pinch post. It's a pro-style form of offense that "would help showcase what he's really good at with his midrange game," Pearl said. Smith lifts or rotates to the high post on the weak side. There, he receives an entry pass. He can size up defenders, show off his jab-step or rip-through when defended tightly. He knocks down NBA shots.

"We give him the ball in the pinch post and he shoots over guys," Pearl said. "We hadn’t really had anyone who’s able to do that, ever."

POINT GUARD:Zep Jasper wouldn't be with Auburn basketball without his tutor. They'll reunite in NCAA Tournament

SHOT BLOCKER:What's it like to get swatted by Auburn basketball’s Walker Kessler? Let me tell you | Durando

Walker Kessler

It was 5:30 a.m., and Kessler was angry. 

The first time Auburn's coaches recruited him, it was an early-morning workout. "You could tell, every time he missed a shot he got (upset) at himself," Pearl recalled. From the beginning, he challenged Kessler not to be so hard on himself. It was a longtime issue: Kessler was competitive to a fault.

He was another coveted Atlanta-area prospect recruited heavily by Auburn, but he chose North Carolina out of high school.

The staff's early in-person efforts made a difference eventually, when Zoom became the playing field. After one season, Kessler left Roy Williams' program. "At the system he was at previously, they told him they were going to do certain things," Pearl said, "but they basically didn’t let him do those things."

On defense, that meant walling up and never leaving his feet. On offense, "they made him stay inside the paint and be a back-to-the-basket big man," Pearl said. "And that’s just not how we play our five-man." 

So Auburn deployed the same strategy it used to get Smith: a detailed Zoom pitch explaining Kessler's role in the Tigers' system. In high school, Kessler's 3-point shooting and dribble penetration were among his most unique assets for his size. By this point, they were rusty skillsets. "Do things that traditional 7-foot-1 guys aren’t allowed to do in the college game," Pearl emphasized during the recruitment. Smith made a guest appearance on Zoom late in the process. The Tigers' second try was a charm.

At Auburn, Kessler often shoots dozens of 3-pointers after practice, while Pearl stays and rebounds for him.

"His confidence got a little shot when he went to North Carolina because they told him to stop doing the things that made him great offensively," Pearl said. "It takes a little time to get that back. In the early parts of the year, he was struggling a little bit with his identity." But Kessler has coaches who watched him beat himself up years ago. They understand him.

"He’s come such a long way from that," Pearl said.

Zep Jasper

Steven Pearl consulted his trusty analytics. Whenever plunging into the transfer portal, that's where he starts: Kenpom. In this case, he needed guards, and he needed defense. Jasper had solid numbers in three seasons at College of Charleston.

"The next thing we’ll do is call coaches in the (player's) league," Pearl said.

Pearl dialed up Allen Payne, an Elon assistant and former Auburn player. He discussed Jasper's offense: He can go get a bucket. He's steady and doesn't turn it over. 

Then Payne got to the good stuff.

"He’s the best defender in our league, though," Pearl remembers Payne saying, "and he should've been defensive player of the year."

That was all Auburn needed: "Immediately," Pearl said, "I was like, 'All right, I’m going completely in on this kid.'"

Jasper was being recruited by other top mid-majors, plus Georgia. But he had done his homework. It was "an easy recruitment," Pearl said. Jasper wanted Auburn as much as Auburn wanted him.

Wendell Green Jr.

Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl was recruiting point guard Sharife Cooper – who would spend one season with the Tigers before going to the NBA – at a high school tournament when he noticed another undersized dude with huge confidence.

Three-star Wendell Green Jr. was draining 3-pointers for La Lumiere. Bruce Pearl called his son: "This is the best point guard in the tournament. What's his story?"

Steven explained that Green was being heavily recruited by mid-majors, and Auburn already had Cooper lined up. "We really can't move on him," Steven said. He remembers his dad's reply: "I'm telling you, man, he's the real deal. He's going to be special wherever he goes."

Green ended up at Eastern Kentucky. But after one season, Steven Pearl saw his name pop up in the portal. 

"Remember that little point guard from Detroit you loved so much?" Steven asked Bruce Pearl, his father as well as his boss. The head coach hadn't forgotten.

There was one trait making Bruce Pearl reluctant, and it wasn't Green's size.

"Would he play defense?" Steven said.

Bruce Pearl was on the fence. He watched film and saw Green's potential. When the Zoom recruiting sessions commenced, he  was straightforward.

"The thing on you is: You don't guard," Bruce told him. "Will you sit down and guard?"

"They obviously took a little offense to it," Steven recalled. "They asked him to do so much offensively at Eastern Kentucky that sometimes he had to save himself on the defensive end."

So part of Auburn's pitch was balancing offense and defense more. Bruce Pearl is famous for keeping starters to less than 30 minutes per game.  Green would be sharing minutes with Jasper at point guard.

Nobody knew during those Zooms that Green would be converted to sixth man four games into the season, with the strategy being that Jasper's defense sparks Auburn; Green's fresh legs provide scoring amid attrition late in games. "Credit to him because a lot of guys don't take that well," Steven Pearl said. "They see not starting as a huge thing of disrespect."

But the coaching staff knew Green would handle it professionally. Why? Because Green accepted Bruce's challenge in stride during Zoom recruitment.

"Coach," Steven recalls him saying, "I'm going to play defense."

K.D. Johnson

The digital discrepancy was largest with Johnson. "You see his personality on the floor, but on Zooms, he's very quiet," Pearl said. "He probably doesn't trust anybody. Which is normal."

Assistant coach Wes Flanigan happened upon Johnson at a high school game while watching his son, Allen Flanigan. Auburn recruited the tenacious guard, but after the Tigers landed Cooper, Johnson committed to Georgia. He wanted to play point guard. 

"(Cooper) was a big part of why we didn’t get K.D. the first time around," Steven Pearl said. 

When Johnson entered the portal, Auburn once again had two point guards committed for next season: Jasper and Green. Others schools including UAB pitched Johnson to play 30 to 40 minutes as a point guard. Bruce Pearl called Johnson's trainer with a different philosophy: 30 minutes max, playing the two. It took convincing.

But the decisive idea was Bruce's conviction: Auburn was close to finalizing a championship roster.