As he begins preparing for the upcoming season Bruce Pearl is weighing how to deploy Auburn's personnel, with the possibility of utilizing two five-man units heavily under consideration.

Auburn has 11 eligible players for the 2017-18 season plus the addition of VCU transfer Samir Doughty, who officially signed on Tuesday and will sit out this season.

"I have 11 really good players and I'm not bringing - we made a conscious decision, a conscious effort, all spring to resist the temptation to bring in a 12th eligible player," Pearl said. "Because I don't need anybody else eligible ... I've got enough personnel."

Favorites for the starting five are clearly Austin Wiley at center, Danjel Purifoy at small forward and Mustapha Heron at shooting guard, with Horace Spencer and Chuma Okeke competing at power forward and Jared Harper and Davion Mitchell vying for the point guard job. Then there are returning players with significant experience in Bryce Brown and Anfernee McLemore, junior college transfer guard Malik Dunbar and forward Desean Murray, who sat out last year after transferring from Presbyterian.

"I look at us as a team that will play 10. I can't see us not playing fewer than 10. Our strength is our depth. Whether or not we platoon, that might be something I look at, like John (Calipari) did a couple of years ago at Kentucky. I don't know that I will, but it's something that I'm definitely going to look at.

"(A) combinations of players, if there looks to me that I can figure out the right combinations of our personnel out there together I may focus on that as much as I would focus on how many minutes guys play. We're going to have to share it."

Kentucky utilized a platoon system during the 2014-15 season that ended in the Final Four.

Pearl is not claiming Auburn, which is coming off an 18-14 season and hasn't made the NCAA Tournament since 2003, has the talent level of that Kentucky team, only that the approach Calipari used might be worth exploring.

"We're not Kentucky; nowhere near Kentucky," Pearl said, "but those kids weren't worried about 16 or 12 (points). It didn't matter. Our guys are going to have to take that approach because let's just shoot a better percentage, let's take better shots and it could be somebody different every night."

Though Pearl is entering his fourth season on the Plains, last season was the true start of a cultural foundation for the program, which was pieced together largely with transfers in his first two seasons.

Pearl elected not to seek a graduate transfer for the team's thirteenth scholarship this season largely so the young core of the roster could develop.

"I finally got the roster, finally got the depth," he said. "When you first take over a program you could attract pretty good transfers, you can, it's really hard to attract really good high school players. One thing I think we've been able to do between Bryce and Horace and that group, Anfernee and Jared and Austin and Mustapha, Danjel, Davion, Chuma we've gotten, but I couldn't do that my first year."

There is reason for optimism for this season and with no seniors on the roster, the 2018-19 team could include much of the same personnel depending on whether Wiley, Heron and Purifoy choose to pursue the pros next spring, plus add five-star forward commit EJ Montgomery,

"I would anticipate at the end of next season having at least one of the underclassmen having the opportunity to play (professionally)," Pearl said. "That would be my hope. That would mean that they've developed and we've had a heck of a year and that would be a really healthy thing for our program."