Bruce Pearl and the Auburn Tigers’ men’s basketball team finally caught a break on Thanksgiving.

“We haven’t had Thanksgiving off since I can’t remember when. We’re always playing in a tournament,” Pearl said Tuesday afternoon. “I’m not gonna lie to you, I liked it. And I watched a lot of basketball over the weekend.”

But come Wednesday, Pearl and the Tigers (4-1) will return to action as they host Mike Young and the Virginia Tech Hokies (5-2) as part of this year’s ACC/SEC Challenge.

“The Challenge matters,” Pearl said. “I think it’s great for college basketball, and I know it’s really great for the selection committee to determine how many teams from the SEC go, how many teams from the ACC go, and who the stronger conferences are. This’ll be somewhat of an indicator.”

Before the Tigers and Hokies tip off in what will be their first meeting since 1999, here are three questions for the matchup.

Can Auburn keep up its 3-point defense?

Virginia Tech’s backcourt is bolstered by a pair of seasoned guards in Sean Pedulla and Hunter Cattoor — two guys that make up the Hokies’ three-headed scoring monster.

Pedulla is tied with big man Lynn Kidd as the Hokies’ leading scorer with an average of 15.9 points per game, while Cattoor has chipped in an average of 14.7 points per game through Virginia Tech’s opening seven games this season.

But what makes this backcourt tick is its ability to score from beyond the arc. Together, Pedulla and Cattoor are shooting the three ball at a 39.5% clip. Sophomore Tyler Nickel has has also been successful from the perimeter, having hit nine of his 22 attempts for a 40.9% rate.

“They have three guys that are shooting almost close to 40-percent from 3. If they’re open, they can make it,” Pearl said.

Despite the Hokies having that kind of success, however, they haven’t seen a defense as quite as efficient at defending the three ball as they will on Wednesday night.

Granted the Tigers haven’t seen the stiffest competition in their first five games, Auburn has allowed its opponent to convert from beyond the arc just 22.4% of the time — a mark that ranks as the fifth-best in the country.

Baylor was good from three 47.4% of the time in the season opener on Nov. 7, followed by Southeastern Louisiana converting 35.7% of its three-point tries.

Since then, however, three balls have been hard to come by for Auburn’s opponents as the Tigers haven’t allowed a team to shoot it better than 20% from beyond the three-point line.

“Obviously we’ve got to do a great job of guarding the 3-ball,” Pearl said. “We’ve done pretty well with it so far this year, but it’s going to be obviously an emphasis there.”

Who will win the battle of the 6-foot-10 Florida natives?

Auburn’s Johni Broome and Virginia Tech’s Kidd aren’t strangers to one another.

In high school, Broome played at Tampa Catholic, while Kidd played at IMG Academy. Those two schools are just 60 miles from one another and frequent playing each other on the hardwood.

Broome and Kidd played each other once in high school as IMG Academy visited Tampa Catholic and left with a 76-70, double-overtime win on the road.

That game saw Broome — a senior at the time — tally 32 points and come down with 11 rebounds. Kidd’s stats from the pair’s high school meeting weren’t listed.

This season, Broome is leading Auburn’s scoring efforts with an average of 15.4 points per game, while Kidd is able to boast a narrow advantage with an average of 15.9 points per game. However, in terms of efficiency, Kidd’s 74.5% field goal percentage is head and shoulders above Broome’s 54.9% clip, though Kidd has taken 10 less shots than Broome despite playing in two more games.

“Kidd, if he gets it in there, he’s going to score at a high percentage,” Pearl said. “He’s shooting like 75, 76-percent on the inside. That means if he gets close touches, he’s scoring.”

On the glass, Kidd has another slight advantage as he’s pulled down an average of eight rebounds per game to Broome’s 7.6 rebounds per game.

Broome and Kidd are bound to have their hands full with each other Wednesday night.

How will both team’s respond to their past week?

While Auburn played one game last week and ran Alabama A&M out of the gym with an 84-54 win at home, Virginia Tech is coming off a holiday week that saw it play three games during the ESPN Events Invitational in Kissimmee, Fla.

While the Tigers went 1-0 last week with a lopsided win, the Hokies went 2-1 with a lopsided loss after falling to the 19th-ranked FAU Owls 84-50.

“They played them really well,” Pearl said of the Hokies’ game against the Owls. “They wound up getting beat in probably that third game in four days type thing. They were fatigued. But they’ve got some really, really good players and they’re extremely well-coached.”

How Virginia Tech rebounds from its 34-point loss will be a factor to watch as the Hokies prepare to play their fourth-straight game on the road.

And while the Tigers might be feeling much better about themselves after last week’s 30-point win and the fact that they get to play Wednesday’s game in the comfort of their own home, Pearl is still approaching the matchup cautiously.

“I hope we’re not rusty. We can’t afford to be rusty, because they’re so sharp,” Pearl said. “But we came back Saturday morning, and we had three pretty hard days. Saturday, Sunday and Monday were really good, hard practices. We actually got up and down a lot, because I felt like we needed to play. The day before the game, we’ll try to take it easy, get their legs back and then go.”

Auburn and Virginia Tech are set to tip off Wednesday night at 8:15 from Neville Arena. The game will be televised on ESPN2.