AUBURN — Auburn basketball center Johni Broome is a lot of things.
He’s a consensus All-American, the second player in program history to earn that distinction. He’s an efficient scorer, expanding his range last season to knock down 39.2% of his 3-pointers against SEC competition. He’s one of three stars to lead the Tigers to a conference tournament title, joining Chuck Person (1985) and Jared Harper (2019).
Broome is also the most experienced player Bruce Pearl has ever coached at Auburn.
Starting his career with two seasons at Morehead State before transferring ahead of the 2022-23 campaign, Broome has appeared in 132 games and has made 128 starts at the Division I level. He’s set to return for his fifth and final season, anchoring an Auburn defense that was rated by KenPom as the No. 6 unit in the country last season and leading an offense that settled at No. 10.
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Of the dozens of players who’ve played under Pearl at Auburn, none have had as much experience heading into a season as Broome. Backup big man Dylan Cardwell’s 128 games makes him No. 2 in that category, and Chris Moore’s 115 appearances has him tied with Zep Jasper for No. 3. No one comes close to Broome in terms of career starts; Jasper’s 95 before the 2022-23 season places him second.
Broome’s abundance of experience is part of a larger trend with the Tigers, who are going all in on veterans ahead of Pearl’s 11th season with the program. Of the 11 players expected to be part of the rotation next season, there are 860 games and 423 starts at the Division I level spread among them, and those 11 players are collectively 33 years removed from high school.
Nine of the 10 have at least three years of collegiate experience, and six have four. Pearl has never had a team in which more than two players were four or more years removed from high school.
Auburn, along with every other program in the country, has been granted the opportunity to lean into experience due to the extra year of eligibility all players received in 2020 because of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Without it, players such as Broome, Cardwell, Moore, Chad Baker-Mazara, Denver Jones and Chaney Johnson would all be ineligible to play next season.
The Tigers clearly put an emphasis on getting older this offseason. Auburn’s tandem at point guard from a year ago — Aden Holloway and Tre Donaldson — would’ve had a collective three years of experience. Holloway and Donaldson both hit the portal, and the Tigers replaced them with Furman transfer JP Pegues, who has three years of experience himself.
Georgia Tech transfer Miles Kelly has three years played already, too. As does SMU transfer Ja’Heim Hudson.
Pearl’s three most experienced teams at Auburn have come over the last three years. That’s natural, given the COVID year. The Tigers are 76-27 over this stretch, which includes two conference banners and three trips to the NCAA Tournament.
The fourth-most experienced team Pearl has enjoyed at Auburn, and the most experienced of the squads not impacted by COVID, came during the 2018-19 season. The Tigers won 30 games with that roster, winning the 2019 SEC Tournament and advancing all the way to the Final Four before narrowly losing to Virginia.
Auburn had a unique advantage to go all in on veterans ahead of Pearl’s 11th season. The Tigers have chosen to do that, and history seems to favor that decision.
Richard Silva is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at rsilva@gannett.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @rich_silva18.