NCAA Basketball: Ranking the 12 teams in play for 5-star CG Hunter Sallis

Dating back to his days at Tennessee, head coach Bruce Pearl has a strong history with scoring guards. Jared Harper and Bryce Brown were the stars of the 2019 Final Four squad, while Samir Doughty and J’Von McCormick led the team in scoring this past season. Whether under the radar three-star guys or transfers, perimeter players just seem to excel in Coach Pearl’s offensive system.

So does talented players overall, including Isaac Okoro. He was a former five-star recruit who had a great freshman campaign, scoring 12.9 ppg. He enough potential to allow him to enter the NBA Draft and is projected as a lottery pick. There’s a good chance that incoming five-star point guard Sharife Cooper will make it back-to-back early entrants to the draft if he has a huge season.

If not, he and Sallis would be an interesting backcourt pairing. But while Cooper’s potential departure opens things up for Sallis to come in and lead Auburn, they may be better suited to focus solely on JD Davison. The guard from Alabama has been closely tied with the Tigers and from an outside view, the program has a better shot to get Davison than Sallis.