Auburn basketball opened up Neville Arena on Saturday for fans to watch the team’s third scrimmage of the preseason ahead of the nighttime football game against Ole Miss.

And for a basketball event held on a football game, there was a respectable turnout with a few hundred fans in the building. Auburn played a scrimmage with referees and had three 10-minute periods.

For the first 10 minutes, Auburn had its presumed 10-man rotation facing the scout team and then split up the team for the remaining two periods. More on how head coach Bruce Pearl organized that below.

It’s hard to take too much from a scrimmage, of course, but here are three key observations.

Aden Holloway. Good at basketball.

Holloway might not be Auburn’s starter right away at point guard, but his talent is clear and obvious.

It didn’t matter that his first two 3-pointers came against the scout team. Those were two very deep shots that were impressive against anyone.

His touch as a shooter has been clear throughout the preseason, but this much more efficient and impressive shooting performance came after Auburn’s last scrimmage where Holloway didn’t make a shot from the field.

Against the starters later in the scrimmage, Holloway hit another impressive 3-pointer from long range as he was falling away and was fouled.

Holloway also had eight assists to two turnovers. He finished with 12 points.

It’s been another day where the talent flashed. He’s going to be a great and key player for Auburn. But he remains in a battle for the starting point guard spot with Tre Donaldson. Speaking of which…

Bruce Pearl said he hasn’t decided on a starting lineup yet. It’s easy to tell why.

At his SEC Basketball Tipoff press conference earlier this week, Pearl said he was expecting to have decided on his starting lineup by now, but he hasn’t. Instead, Pearl said Wednesday, he was anticipating Auburn would use a 10-man rotation and the starting lineup would at least be fluid to start the year.

But he has to put five guys out there first.

When the team split up after the first 10 minutes, Pearl said it would be starters against the bench. The starting five he used was Tre Donaldson, Denver Jones, Chris Moore, Chaney Johnson and Johni Broome.

In all three scrimmages, Donaldson and Holloway have been on opposite teams as part of this point guard battle. While Holloway was maybe the most impressive player for Auburn today, Donaldson played better than he did in the last scrimmage, too.

Auburn’s two point guards combined for 13 assists against three turnovers. That’s a great rate.

However, the bigger note is how much that group of starters struggled, at first at least. The bench jumped out to a big early lead in that period and won it 24-15. The starters played poorly defensively and made some sloppy offensive mistakes.

After those 10 minutes, Pearl flipped Chad Baker-Mazara and Jaylin Williams over to the starters team and moved Chaney Johnson and Chris Moore to the bench team. The starters played better after this adjustment but still lost 30-24.

The on-court showing furthered what Pearl suggested at media day: his team is largely all at the same level. That level is good, but it isn’t great yet.

Defensive struggles continue

As a team, Auburn shot 56% from the field. That’s a lot.

Certainly, that includes the fact that Auburn’s scholarship players seemed unable to miss. But that’s still a lot. And Auburn shooting a high rate in the scrimmage is not just a result of a team that might be good on offense, but a product of a defense that has been slow on rotations no matter who was playing.

The shooting percentages went down when Auburn split up the teams, but it wasn’t much better.

Auburn ran a full-court press when it was facing the scout team, which worked pretty well at first. But the Tigers backed off on the pressure when during the second and third periods. Certainly, a team can’t pressure like that for a whole game, but it was indicative of this being a very typical Bruce Pearl team: it’s got a lot of athletes, it can run and it will play fast.

But it needs to rotate better, box out better, and close out better. These are relatively simple fixes that will likely develop slowly, but could pose early-season issues for Auburn.

Other stats notes

– Chris Moore led Auburn with 16 points. It was maybe the best he’s looked this fall. He was one of the few who played well on both ends of the floor. He had six rebounds on a block, too.

– Johni Broome attempted to step out and shoot a bit, but not with consistent success. He scored 10 points, but on a quite inefficient 4-11 shooting.

– Transfers Chad Baker-Mazara and Chaney Johnson both flashed their athleticism with dunks and generally played well on offense, but need some defensive improvements. Baker-Mazara may be the energy guy of this Auburn team.