One month ago, when the Auburn men's basketball team was eight games into its stellar start that now has reached 13-0, Tigers senior point guard J'Von McCormick was asked what needed to improve the most.
Without hesitating, McCormick replied, "Free-throw shooting."
The 6-foot, 185-pounder from New Orleans has proven to be a worthy successor to Jared Harper, last season's floor general who guided Auburn to its first 30-win season and its first trip to the NCAA tournament's Final Four. McCormick had a career-high 28 points in Saturday afternoon's 80-68 win at Mississippi State, which included an 8-of-11 showing in free throws.
That performance raised McCormick's success rate from the foul line to 47.4%, which still trails his 50% accuracy last season on 3-point attempts.
"You put the past behind you," Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said when asked last week about McCormick's struggles at the line. "J'Von is a really good shooter, and you don't look at the misses. You just look forward. You get in there and work.
"He is not going to have a problem at the free-throw line."
McCormick was shooting just 22.2% from the line after Auburn's first three games this season and was still at 28.6% through the first nine. The Tigers overall are shooting 65.7% from the line, ranking 13th among the 14 Southeastern Conference teams.
Pearl is not finding many faults in McCormick, who is averaging 12.0 points a game and whose 5.5 assists per contest rank fourth in the SEC on an offense that is second in the league with 82.0 points per game. The SEC on Monday named McCormick as its player of the week.
"He took over," Pearl said in a news conference Saturday night in Starkville. "We gave him the keys to the car, and he drove it. He's leading our team. He's leading off the court. He's leading on the court. He's leading with his worth ethic."
This Auburn team is built much differently from last season, when Harper, Bryce Brown and Chuma Okeke led the way as the Tigers set an SEC record for made 3-pointers with 454. Harper, Brown, Okeke, Malik Dunbar and Horace Spencer moved on from last year's team, with Okeke leaving early and going to the Orlando Magic as the 16th overall NBA draft pick, but Pearl also had five juniors last season who have cycled up.
Samir Doughty, Austin Wiley, Danjel Purifoy and Anfernee McLemore are the seniors in addition to McCormick, with Wiley's chiseled 6-11, 260-pound frame helping this season's Tigers enjoy more success inside. The Tigers lead the SEC with 42.3 rebounds and 6.4 blocked shots per game.
Auburn would have an all-senior starting five were it not for touted freshman Isaac Okoro, whose 12.8 points per game ranks second to Doughty's team-high 16.3. Okoro's early impact has relegated McLemore to a sixth-man role.
The Tigers, who are ranked No. 5 in the latest Associated Press poll and No. 6 in the NET rankings, will try to improve to 14-0 Wednesday night against visiting Vanderbilt. The game tips off at 9 and will be televised by the SEC Network.
"We're really not looking at the record," McCormick said. "We just don't want to be the team that loses to an unranked team or a team that's not on our level. We take it game by game and try to focus in, because we're going to face the challenge of everybody trying to take our heads off."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.