NASHVILLE—Wedged between Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg and Florida forward Alex Condon is Tahaad Pettiford with a layer of lamination covering his photoshopped figure. He’s letting it fly in an all-white uniform as the blue backdrop behind him sets the scene on the cover of the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook. The magnitude of his inclusion precedes him, as does the suggestion that the cover makes about him.
With the cover art, Pettiford’s case to be considered one of the faces of college basketball was elevated. Pettiford didn’t need any sportswriter to validate his rèsumè at that point, though. It spoke for itself.
Pettiford was the lone returner from Auburn’s Final Four team a season ago and was a catalyst in the run as a freshman. Pettiford heavily considered the NBA Draft, but announced at the last minute that he was returning to school in a move that immediately made him one of the sport’s headliners.
Before Auburn played its first game, its star guard was named to the preseason All-SEC First Team, Sporting News’ preseason third team All-America team, the NABC Division I Player of the Year Watch List, Oscar Robertson Trophy Preseason Watch List and the Bob Cousy Award Watch List. He wasn’t the most decorated player in the country in the preseason awards, but he sure was close.
The expectation was almost the overwhelming type, the type that Pettiford could easily get ahead of himself with.
“I tried to, of course, take it all in, enjoy it,” Pettiford told Basket Under Review, “But, while just knowing that I want more, I have bigger goals.”
In reality, though, the goals couldn’t get much bigger than the ones that had already been set out for Pettiford externally. He was supposed to be the guy to get Auburn back to where it had been. Nobody was tasked more with making this a smooth transition as Auburn worked through a late move that made Steven Pearl its head coach after Bruce Pearl’s retirement.
For better or worse, the magazine covers and preseason buzz indicated increased responsibility and expectation as much as they did Pettiford’s previous accomplishments.
“I feel like everybody expects the same thing as last year,” Auburn forward Sebastian Williams Adams told Basket Under Review, “Like, first off, it's a whole new team. We returned one guy. He was our only returning guy. For people to expect things to be exactly the same is not really fair to him.”
As Pettiford sits alone at his locker in the corner of the Bridgestone Arena locker room, he’s in a position that he’s almost entirely evaded throughout his college basketball career. Pettiford and Auburn are on the NCAA Tournament bubble and are fighting each day to give the committee a reason to put them in the dance.
As it stands in Basket Under Review’s projected bracket, Auburn is the first team out of the NCAA Tournament field and still has work to do in order to feel good about its chances of making the Round of 64.
Perhaps had things gone differently in a four-point outing from Pettiford against Oklahoma, a five-point showing against Purdue and a nine-point performance against Missouri, things would be different these days. Pettiford hasn’t quite been the star he’s been billed up to be, though, and he isn’t naive to that reality.
“I definitely didn’t meet my expectations,” Pettiford admitted. “I definitely think I could’ve played a lot better, did a lot more things, won a lot more games."
Pettiford wasn’t entirely disappointing on the season, although he didn’t live up to standard. The Auburn guard is averaging 15.2 points, 3.6 assists and 2.9 rebounds per game while ranking nationally in three of KenPom’s efficiency categories. The problem, he’s shooting just 39.8% from the field–which makes him the least efficient rotation player on Auburn’s roster–and 29.1% from 3-point range.
The Auburn guard also ran into a preseason arrest for driving under the influence and into two benchings–notably one in a home loss to Texas A&M and an away game against Georgia that resulted in an Auburn loss.
"It was a coach's decision," Auburn coach Steven Pearl said postgame that day. "It was a failure to meet our team standards and expectations. Tahaad's got to do a better job of leading by example. That's something we continuously talk about. Until he does those things off the court — he's got to stop putting me in these positions where I have to make difficult decisions."
The season in which Pettiford appeared to be poised for as big of a jump as anyone in college basketball has been a season from hell in a number of ways–a number of them self-inflicted. It’s not all lost, but Pettiford may end up having to chalk this up to a learning experience rather than an accolade-filled stretch run.
It’s a harsh reality, but one that Pettiford will have to come to terms with.
Pettiford wraps up a conversation with one of Auburn’s off-floor staffers as he turns around and openly accepts an interview request. His glasses and smile make him more inviting than anyone in Auburn’s locker room.
When Pettiford is in this setting, it’s generally a respite. Perhaps that’s why the smile is difficult to wipe off of his face as he stands off to the side watching Auburn guard Kevin Overton do his media availability and opts to join the scrum jokingly.
Shortly after the 30-minute period in which decorum suggests Pettiford should stay off his phone, he’s at risk of seeing something online in which he’s the subject of harsh criticism. Even after a big Auburn win, Pettiford’s unintentionally polarizing nature has opened him up to that and has made it a near inevitability.
“People let his bad overshadow his good,” Williams-Adams said. “Even when he has a big game, sometimes we may lose and then they're like ‘well, Tahaad had a good game, but we lost. I'm like ‘okay, well, like, at least talk about the fact that he's had a good game.’”
Pettiford says that he feels as if he’s been “downed” often and that without help from his teammates’ encouragement, he may have let it get to him. The Auburn guard says he hasn’t logged into Twitter in months, but that he still sees negative posts and comments on Instagram that he has to scroll past. What he’s learned, though, is to let the outside world “say what they say and just try to brush it off and prove them wrong every single day.” Pettiford says it’s not his job to do anything beyond that in regard to the narrative surrounding him.
As the Auburn sophomore speaks about everything that surrounds him, he does so without resentment in his voice and seemingly without much intention of clearing his name. Pettiford addresses what he has to, but doesn’t appear to have all that much of an agenda he’s pushing here.
“He's a mature kid,” Auburn wing Elyjah Freeman told Basket Under Review. “He has a lot of pressure on him off the court, on the court. Just him being the one being able to lead this team after this season they just had. And for him to stay mature and be able to take all the coaching and all the outside and letting all go and just being able to stay calm, he's real mature about it.”
The visual is very 2024-25 esque. There’s Pettiford handing back a Sharpie and turning towards the tunnel after signing his last autograph of the day. Auburn had just won and its star guard is ripping his shirt off yelling words of encouragement at Auburn forward Keyshawn Hall as he passes the media and finds his way into the locker room.
In a season that’s made an effort to strip Pettiford of his joy, there he is showing it off.
“Life is about ups and downs,” Pettiford said. “A lot of unexpected stuff is going to happen. It's just how you move on from it the next day, the next play.”
Pettiford appears to have at least a baseline of positivity visible within his day-to-day interactions despite the disappointing set of circumstances surrounding his season. He says he gets that from his mom–who encourages him not to let people see that he’s down in an effort to avoid bringing everyone else down.
Perhaps that would’ve flown a season ago when Pettiford was a freshman within a group of talented old guys. No longer are those days, though. Auburn is on the verge of the NCAA Tournament and it needs Pettiford to lead the way if it’s going to get there.
“This is Tahaad Pettiford,” Auburn center Filip Jovic declared. “He is a leader in everything he gives us, offensively he’s a good assister, defensively he has helped us a lot.”
For as talented as the Auburn guard is, the NCAA Tournament could still be played without him. Perhaps the College Basketball Yearbook wouldn’t put him on the cover if it could do things over again and All-SEC preseason voters wouldn’t do the same–particularly knowing that Pettiford wouldn’t receive an All-League award in the postseason–but Pettiford doesn’t believe he’s too far gone.
This is Tahaad Pettiford, after all.
“I'm grateful for this opportunity to be in the position I'm in,” Pettiford said. “Hopefully we can just stay on a run and go to the tournament, see how far we can go.”