Pearl’s thoughts on Auburn’s opening-weekend NCAA Tournament draw

[aubiefifty 16,705]

Bruce Pearl’s thoughts on Auburn’s opening-weekend NCAA Tournament draw

By Tom Green | tgreen@al.com

5-7 minutes

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When Bruce Pearl saw Auburn’s name appear on the screen Sunday evening, two thoughts quickly crossed his mind.

He was grateful to see the Tigers get a two-seed — the highest No. 2 seed in the field, no less; he thought his team earned that over the course of 32 games. Then he saw the site, Greenville, S.C., and was thankful that Auburn would open the tournament at the opening-weekend site closest to the Plains (approximately 250 miles away from Auburn). That meant the Tigers’ fans would have an easier time traveling to see them in the postseason, compared to prior years that saw the team shipped out to San Diego and Salt Lake City for the first two rounds.

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Then he looked at Auburn’s draw—15th-seeded Jacksonville State on Friday, followed by a potential matchup against either seventh-seeded USC or 10th-seeded Miami in the Round of 32.

“Right now, we have four teams in the tournament: Jacksonville State, USC and Miami, and one of those four teams are going to advance to the Sweet 16,” Pearl said Sunday evening after the full field of 68 was revealed. “I know all the coaches; I don’t know a lot about their teams yet.”

Auburn’s staff will quickly get to work preparing scouts for the other three teams in the Tigers’ quadrant of the Midwest Region. That begins with Jacksonville State, the automatic bid from the Atlantic Sun.

The Gamecocks didn’t win their conference tournament but still earned the league’s automatic bid because the team that won the Atlantic Sun Tournament, Bellarmine, is ineligible for the postseason due to its transition period from Division II to Division I. Jacksonville State, which lost in the tournament semifinals, got the nod as the league’s regular-season champion following a 21-10 campaign that included a 13-3 mark in conference play.

The first-round pairing with the Gamecocks provides a peculiar matchup between two teams from the same state. Auburn is 13-0 all-time against Jacksonville State, but the programs have not met since 2013.

“I was pretty excited when I seen them come up on the board because they deserve it,” Auburn guard Zep Jasper said. “They worked super hard this year. Another team I was looking forward to seeing was UAB. Those guys are also a great Alabama team. It’s just exciting to see Alabama teams in it together. It shows you how hard we have worked, what type of relationships Alabama teams have and that we’re successful. We’re going to be successful for years going on and going on and on like that.”

Pearl may not be familiar with this year’s Jacksonville State team—at least not yet—he is plenty familiar with Gamecocks coach Ray Harper, who is in his fifth season with the program. Well before he took over at Jacksonville State, though, Harper was the head coach at Kentucky Wesleyan, a Division-II program, from 1996-2005. Part of that stint overlapped with Pearl’s time at Southern Indiana from 1992-2001.

The two programs were rivals in the Grand Lakes Valley Conference, with Harper’s team holding a 13-3 edge over Pearl’s between 1996-2001.

“He got the best of me,” Pearl said. “I’ve always given Ray credit for that. We were big rivals, recruiting rivals, and they were our archenemy, not just our rival. It was very akin to the Auburn-Alabama rivalry, and it was very, very heated at times. So, I would venture to say there’s probably not a team in the country that Jacksonville State would rather play than Bruce Pearl and Auburn, I’m just telling you.”

If Pearl can buck that track record coaching against Harper’s team, it will set up another potentially favorable matchup in the Round of 32 against KenPom’s lowest-rated team among No. 7 seeds (USC) or its lowest-rated team among No. 10 seeds (Miami). Pearl spoke highly of both Trojans coach Andy Enfield and Miami coach Jim Larranaga.

Enfield—perhaps best known for his days leading the “Dunk City” Florida Gulf Coast teams—guided USC to the Elite Eight a year ago. Larranaga, meanwhile, rose to prominence when he took George Mason to the Final Four in 2006. He’s now in his 11th season at Miami (where current Auburn staffer Mike Burgomaster once served as a manager for some of the program’s most successful teams of the era) and has the Hurricanes in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018.

“I have very great respect for Jim Larranaga; he’s one of the great veterans in our business,” Pearl said. “…Obviously, we’ll have a leg up there as far as that scout (thanks to Burgomaster) if we advance and if it’s Miami. And Any Enfield is one of the most underrated college basketball coaches in the country, and the job he’s done at USC — one of the most underrated turnarounds. You look at what SC did last year in the NCAA Tournament, they advanced and they’re talented, and they’re well-coached.

“Won’t be easy to win two, but obviously we’re excited.”

[gravejd 3,269]

I'm always amazed by the coaching connections you find in this sport. Crazy that BP and Jacksonville St coach were rivals 25 years ago. The other guy owned Pearl and here they are a couple decades later and Pearl is the #2 seed at AU and Harper is coaching down the road at Jack ST. 

I like the confidence coming from Pearl on the matchups. Seems the lose didn't get him down as much as it did the fans. Which is good to see! I'm reserving hope that we are about to kick it into another gear and go on a tear here. I'm not sure who i would rather face in that second round game. USC is super big and defends while Miami is probably more athletic and better on offense. So i kind of think Miami would be the better matchup.....i'm not to heady about our chances against a team that can play really good defense. 

[aubiefifty 16,705]

10 minutes ago, gravejd said:

I'm always amazed by the coaching connections you find in this sport. Crazy that BP and Jacksonville St coach were rivals 25 years ago. The other guy owned Pearl and here they are a couple decades later and Pearl is the #2 seed at AU and Harper is coaching down the road at Jack ST. 

I like the confidence coming from Pearl on the matchups. Seems the lose didn't get him down as much as it did the fans. Which is good to see! I'm reserving hope that we are about to kick it into another gear and go on a tear here. I'm not sure who i would rather face in that second round game. USC is super big and defends while Miami is probably more athletic and better on offense. So i kind of think Miami would be the better matchup.....i'm not to heady about our chances against a team that can play really good defense. 

we have some time to work on things and should have two days more of fresh legs maybe than the other teams we are facing. jax state is pretty good and bigger schools have been poaching some of their players recently. one of the sec teams we played this year had a kid they scooped up from them and he seemed to play well. i wish i could remember which school it was.