AUBURN, Alabama (EETV)- The Auburn Tigers finish their international tour of Israel with a record of 2-1. The Tigers grabbed wins against Israel’s U-20 National team and their All-star select team. The Tiger’s only loss came from a close game against a star-filled Israeli national team on Monday.
The Tigers played their first game in Jerusalem last Tuesday against Israel’s U-20 National team. The Tigers fired on all cylinders and walked away with a 117-56 victory.
Auburn Freshman Yohan Traore led the team in scoring with 20 points on 7-of-12 shooting. Thirteen additional Auburn players scored, with six of them reaching double digits, One of those players being Morehead St transfer Johni Broome totaling 17 points, nine rebounds, and blocked a team-best four shots.
Auburn’s game two of the series ended in a 107-71 Tiger win at Hader Yosef Gym, against the Israeli All-Star Select Team on Sunday.
The Tigers forced a whopping 30 turnovers in the win and generated 46 points off Israel's turnovers. Freshman Yohan Traore led the team again with 20 points and teammate Johni Broome wasn’t far behind him with 18 on 9-of-13 shooting. Freshman Chance Westry had his breakout game with seven of Auburn's 18 steals and scored 18 points.
In the third and last game of its foreign trip, Auburn battled back and forth with the professional-player-filled Israel National Team before dropping the contest 95-86 on Monday.
Junior point guard Wendell Green Jr. scored 19 points to lead the Tigers. Auburn guards K.D. Johnson and Zep Jasper each scored 11 points. Jasper made 3 of his 4 three-point shots, while Johnson had the highest plus-minus (+9) rating for the Tigers. Freshman Yohan Traore scored eight points and pulled down four rebounds on Monday after posting back-to-back 20-point efforts in the first two games of the trip.
This trip showed us that Auburn has plenty of talent in freshmen Yohan Traore, Tre Donaldson, and Chance Westry with all three players contributing throughout the series. Morehead St transfer, Johni Broome also showed tons of promise in the center position averaging 17 points 8 rebounds, and 3 blocks. The Tigers maintained great defense throughout the series and scored over 100 points each in the first two games. Auburn also had 10 players score in all three games.
"The biggest takeaway for me is that we've got 12 good basketball players, maybe even 13," Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl said. "We're going to put a good point guard out there. We're going to put a good 2 guard out there. I don't know who is going to start at the 3 or the 4 or the 5 because they all had their moments out there.
Auburn starts its season off on Nov. 7 at home against George Mason.
