Auburn women’s basketball head coach Johnnie Harris, graduate student Honesty Scott-Grayson and senior Taylen Collins were in attendance at SEC Media Days in Birmingham, Alabama, on Thursday.
Harris enters her third season as head coach for the Tigers after leading Auburn to the second round of the WNIT last year – the team’s first postseason appearance since 2019. Looking toward the upcoming season, Harris hopes to build on the team’s successes from last year.
“I feel like we are ahead of where we were last year,” Harris said. “We have the depth we didn’t have last year, and I’m looking forward to continuing to build one step at a time. I’m looking for big things out of this team.”
Harris has a completely different team than she did last year, losing six players to the transfer portal while picking up five players in the portal. Auburn will have a lot of new faces on the court this season along with eight returnees from last year, including the Tigers’ leading scorer from 2022-23 in Scott-Grayson.
“It’s amazing to have [Scott-Grayson] back,” Harris said. “Honesty loves Auburn. She wants to see Auburn back in postseason play, which we didn’t accomplish last year with the NCAA Tournament. She came back to do that,”
Scott-Grayson averaged 12.7 points per game, 3.6 rebounds per game and was the Tigers’ leading 3-point shooter (36.9%) last season, and she brings confidence and experience to a young, new Auburn team.
“My confidence level is very high,” Scott-Grayson said. “We’ve been in the gym working and getting one percent better every day, just focused on each other.”
Scott-Grayson's experience comes from her four seasons of Auburn basketball on the Plains, but Collins, a newcomer on the team, is bringing her own experience from Oklahoma State. Collins transferred to Auburn for her senior year from Oklahoma State where she averaged 9.5 points per game. 9.1 rebounds per game and 27.6 minutes per game, helping lead Oklahoma State to a NCAA Tournament appearance in 2023.
“Taylen is coming off being All-Big12 and the postseason, playing in the NCAA tournament,” Harris said. “That experience, knowing what it takes to get there and leading this team, is really important. When things get rough, there's somebody that's been there and done that, so they can echo what I'm trying to do.”
Collins is one of three Division I transfers gained by Auburn this year, joined by two junior college and three true-freshman as the newcomers for the Tigers.
“With a lot of new players coming in, it’s a lot of getting used to each other and our style of play coming from our different backgrounds. We have a lot of freshmen and a lot of players coming from different schools, me being one of them,” Collins said. “The team we have accumulated has been great. It's a great group of girls, and I think we’re gonna get a lot done this year.”
The Auburn women’s basketball team officially opens its season at Neville Arena on Monday, Nov. 6 against Jacksonville State. Tipoff is at 7 p.m. CST and will be televised on SEC Network+.
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Grace Heim is a junior from Enterprise, Alabama, majoring in English Literature. She started with The Plainsman in January 2023.
