Sharife Cooper has already battled a few good guards since joining Auburn on Jan. 9 but no matchup will be as big as what faces him on Saturday in Baylor’s Davion Mitchell.
Tigers fans are aware of the Bears’ Mitchell as he played for the orange and blue back in 2017-18 when Auburn won the SEC regular season title. As a freshman, the Hinesville, Ga. native averaged 3.7 points and 1.9 assists on 17.1 minutes per game.
With Jared Harper permanently in place as the starter, Mitchell decided to transfer prior to the 2018-19 season much to the chagrin of Bruce Pearl.
“I’m so grateful for Davion coming to Auburn,” Pearl said. “I hated when he left. It broke my heart. He was playing with and competing with Jared Harper. Jared was a year older and had a little bit of an edge. I would have loved to have had a chance to play them together. If Davion stayed, we never would’ve seen J’Von McCormick. So it worked out great for everybody.”
The move to the Big 12 school has definitely been good for Mitchell. As a redshirt sophomore last season, he played 32.4 minutes per game for Scott Drew and became an impact player, putting up 9.9 points, 3.8 assists, 2.7 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game on his way to earning Big 12 Newcomer of the Year.
He’s been even better this year, averaging 12.9 points, 5.9 assist and 2.2 steals per game for undefeated and second-ranked Baylor.
It is Mitchell’s physicality that can be troublesome for the smaller Cooper. At 205 pounds, the Baylor guard has at least 25 pounds on the star freshman guard and will use that to his advantage when trying to get Cooper out of his game.
Pearl, though, isn’t worried about Cooper backing down.
“He’ll do fine,” Pearl said. “He’ll respect Davion for sure. Everything we do will be harder to do because Davion will be guarding him. But they’ve got other guys that can guard as well. It’s Baylor against Auburn. It’s not Davion against Sharife. There’s not bad blood at all between Auburn and Baylor, Davion and our coaches. We love him, we miss him and I’m proud of him. But it’ll be a great matchup of great players.”