Auburn Basketball: 2024 commit Tahaad Pettiford sets up future backcourt

Tahaad Pettiford is one of the top prospects in the entire 2024 recruiting class. He’s made a decision, one that will make Auburn Basketball happy.

With the 2023 recruiting class all but taken care of at the top, the focus and attention of coaching staff have been on the following group of prospects. Several class of 2024 players has already been announcing commitments, including a few top-tier point guards.

The latest is Tahaad Pettiford, a 5’11 playmaker out of Jersey City, New Jersey. He’s a consensus top-30 overall prospect and 247sportsComposite has him listed as a five-star in the 2024 class. Pettiford is currently out with an injury but is a proven facilitator and athlete that can get to the basket and make plays.

The five-star point guard had a list of seven contenders that included UConn, UCLA, Kentucky, Kansas, Seton Hall, and Ole Miss. In the end, the program that was able to land him was Auburn Basketball.

It’s yet another big recruiting win for Bruce Pearl and the Tigers. He joins four-star center Payton Marshall in the class and continues the recruiting arms race in the SEC. More importantly, he’s part of a future backcourt core that’s going to look very different in a couple of years.

The four guards that are in Auburn’s backcourt rotation are Zep Jasper, K.D. Johnson, Wendell Green Jr., and Tre Donaldson. Jasper doesn’t have any eligibility after this season, while both Johnson and Green will be fourth-year seniors next year. The team has top-30 prospect Aden Holloway joining for the 2023-24 season and he’ll likely take Jasper’s minutes to start out.

A backcourt of a sophomore Holloway and Pettiford, as well as the junior version of Donaldson, will be nice for Auburn in the future and that doesn’t even take into account any future incoming transfers. This is what the team needs in an SEC that’s one of the top conferences in the country and will only get better with Oklahoma and Texas.

Auburn Basketball might not be done this week in the backcourt either. Labaron Philon, another ball-handler in the 2024 class and a four-star prospect, is making a decision in the next few days and the Tigers are in the mix. Will they get a 2-0 sweep on the recruiting trail?