‘It’s a joke, honestly’

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al.com

 

‘It’s a joke, honestly’: Steven Pearl scorches Auburn’s unfavorable NCAA Tournament draw

Published: Mar. 17, 2024, 6:27 p.m.

3–4 minutes

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Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, right, and his son and assistant coach Steven Pearl call out to players during the second half of the team's NCAA college basketball game against Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023. Auburn won 82-73. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)AP

Still tied to his hat was a piece of the net from Auburn basketball’s SEC championship win over Florida, which happened just hours before Sunday evening’s March Madness Selection Show on ESPN.

However, the high of Sunday’s win only lasted so long as Auburn learned its NCAA Tournament draw wouldn’t be a favorable one.

Given the fourth seed in the East Region, Auburn drew an opening-round matchup with 13th-seeded Yale.

The catch? Auburn would be sent 2,500 miles away to Spokane, Wash. for the matchup.

And while that’s nothing the Tigers were thrilled about considering it’s a tough trip for Auburn fans to make, that’s not the biggest gripe.

Instead, it’s the fact that Auburn had just won three straight games in the SEC Tournament, collected the tournament title, finished tied for second in the regular season and is ranked as the fourth-best team by KenPom, but still managed to only be a four seed in the the NCAA Tournament.

“The SEC Tournament doesn’t mean a damn thing if you can win three straight games and win the SEC championship and be a four seed,” Auburn associate head coach Steven Pearl said Sunday evening in an interview with The Next Round. “It’s a joke, honestly.”

As of Sunday morning, before Auburn’s title-winning performance against Florida, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had bumped the Tigers from a four seed to a third seed. And certainly, Auburn’s win over Florida would’ve only strengthened that belief.

But Lunardi isn’t the NCAA selection committee, which Pearl believes had its mind made up well before the Tigers took to Nashville for the SEC Tournament.

“They made their mind up before we got to the SEC Tournament,” Pearl said of the committee. “So it makes it really hard for us as coaches to find a way to tell our guys... Obviously it’s amazing to have a championship, but it doesn’t do anything for our team to show up and win three games in three days if we’re not going to be rewarded for it. We get shipped out to Spokane, Washington and have to play in that game.”

Pearl’s intent wasn’t to undermine or discredit the SEC Championship Auburn won Sunday.

“That’s an amazing accomplishment,” Pearl said. “But now we’ve gotta obviously get ready and be excited to go all the way across the country and play a couple of games.”

In Auburn’s first game of the tournament, the Tigers will see Yale on Friday.

Should Auburn advance, it’ll see the winner of San Diego State and UAB on March 24.

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Scenes from the court, locker room in Auburn’s SEC championship party

Updated: Mar. 18, 2024, 7:12 a.m.|Published: Mar. 18, 2024, 6:49 a.m.

8–11 minutes

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After they lifted the trophy and bathed in confetti, after the title they’d sought had become a reality and after they danced on stage with the same carefree abandon and real, genuine friendship that’s been a defining piece of this deep Auburn team all year, assistant coach Steven Pearl stood among his players on the court, and looked toward the nylon net still hanging from the rim.

He wrapped his arm forward Chaney Johnson and pointed to the net, and the ladder awaiting them beneath it. He began to explain what to do with the pair of scissors Johnson would soon hold. Then, Steven Pearl turned to the other players around him and asked a simple question.

“Anyone know how to cut down a net,” Steven Pearl shouted.

A question so mundane but so many didn’t understand how. For so many, they hadn’t been champions before. Champions cut down nets. Pearl’s done it. But only five players on this roster were there the last time the Pearls climbed the ladder.

Auburn most recently took down the nets at home when it won the SEC regular season title in 2022.

And on Sunday, Auburn became a champion again. It would cut down the nets again. Auburn beat Florida 86-67 on Sunday in the SEC championship game in Nashville. It was Auburn’s third-ever SEC Tournament title after 1985 and 2019. It was the fourth total SEC crown under head coach Bruce Pearl who now has two SEC regular season and two SEC Tournament crowns.

Bruce Pearl was the last to cut the nets down. He climbed up the ladder to the rumbling, roaring “Bruuuuuuuuuuce,” cheer from the crowd around. He chopped down the last piece of the second net and thrust it above his head, put it around his neck and climbed down.

But Jalen Harper was first.

In that same arena in 2019, Jalen Harper watched his brother Jared Harper cut down the nets from the same court. Jalen Harper said he’s seen his older brother’s Final Four souvenirs and SEC championship gear around their house.

The younger Harper, who began his career at junior college and came to Auburn as a walk-on in part because of the memories attached to his last name, finally had his turn.

“Now, I get to have my own in 2024,” Jalen Harper said. “We live together, so he’s gonna have to move some stuff around now.”

Jalen Harper hadn’t cut a net down before. He got close in high school, but never won.

So Steven Pearl brought him over to the ladder and climbed up to point out exactly where Harper should snip. Harper climbed next. He took the first piece, Steven Pearl coaching him every step of the way.

He’s won now. In the locker room, he said he was in still shock.

The moment still setting in, Jalen Harper then put on his gray Balenciaga sunglasses and went back to celebrating. Like his brother, he’ll get a banner, too.

“This our sh-t,” Jalen Harper said on the court. “That ain’t going nowhere but back with us.”

***

In the locker room, guard Denver Jones hugged athletic trainer Clark Pearson. He was emotional already. He’s never won a championship before.

“It never gets old,” Pearson told him.

Jones said he wanted to watch the first few Auburn players take a chunk of the net before it was his turn and when he was at last up, he said he’d never climbed a ladder before.

Winning is new.

“I had to watch four people go in front of me,” Jones said, laughing. “I didn’t want to go first. I didn’t want to mess it up.”

He climbed the ladder, he clipped the net. He put it in his hat.

“I’m gonna start getting real emotional in a minute,” Jones said, thoughtful, with a pause. “My route to get here, what it takes, it’s real hard. And that win just felt real great.”

Jones’ route came from leaving FIU where he scored more than 20 points per game and taking on a top program in a top conference with the acceptance and willingness to take far fewer minutes and roles than he’d once had. But he said this team believed they could win since they started gelling last summer. He said they always talked about winning, about getting a banner.

And that’s here now. No matter what happens next in the NCAA Tournament, this team will have a banner.

So at his locker, Jones reached for the piece of net tucked in his hat behind him.

“I’m gonna put this up in a trophy case,” Jones said. “With these shoes right here.”

He pointed to his white pair of Under Armour, Stephen Curry-branded basketball shoes

His “Championship Currys,” Jones called him.

For now, those Championship Curry’s sat on the bench at his locker. The work he’d done in those shoes had been enough. They now could rest.

Jones is buying a new pair of shoes.

Denver Jones' "Championship Curry's" rest in the locker room after Auburn's 86-67 win over Florida in the SEC championship game on March 17, 2024.Matt Cohen | mcohen@al.com

***

After the tournament that cemented their legacies, Chad Baker-Mazara called Chris Moore over to the crowd.

“Take a bow,” Baker-Mazara yelled to his teammate.

So Moore did.

He walked over to the crowd. He took it all in. And he bowed to the applause of a fanbase, a piece of the net tied to the back of his hat. It’s not his first ring here. He was part of the 2022 regular season team.

But in Nashville, he didn’t miss a shot. A perfect 7-7 from the field. It was his grittiest and maybe most endearing stretch for a player who has been nicknamed the “Junkyard Dawg” and maybe no week epitomized that quite like this one.

He’s been through Senior Day now. He took his bow. Maybe it’s that moment of a mutual unspoken thank you which makes his legacy so clear.

“Chris Moore’s legacy at Auburn is somebody who’s believed in Auburn from Day 1,” Moore said at his locker. “The day he stepped on campus, the day he committed. He’s always believed in Auburn. You got a guy who’s ready to give his whole body for not only his team, his coaches, but the fans as well. Hopefully, I leave Auburn, I’ll be remembered for that.”

Moore is one of the winningest players ever at Auburn. In the locker room, he sat cattycorner to Jaylin Williams, the winningest player bar none at Auburn.

Williams wasn’t ready to think about his legacy. He said he doesn’t like to brag about himself. But he and Moore weren’t too far apart.

“When I committed here, I knew I wanted to be an Auburn man,” Williams said. “Once I got here there was no reason, unless I ended up going pro, but there was no transfer or even with the COVID year, the ban, all those things, I stuck around.”

Both Moore and Williams will have their banners up twice in Neville Arena thus far. The 2022 regular season championship and Sunday’s Tournament title. They came to Auburn right after the trip to the Final Four. They’ll leave as two fan favorites during the golden age of Auburn basketball.

Their legacies are left in white font on blue banners.

***

Dylan Cardwell hardly ever put the trophy down. There are only so many opportunities in a career like this.

He’s another one of the few to celebrate like this before. Cardwell walked out of the locker room with the trophy still in his hands, hat on his head, and confetti draped around him like the train on a wedding dress following him down the hall. He took his hat around the locker room to have his teammates all sign it, a memento Cardwell plans to keep for himself to think back on this run.

But in the waning seconds before a championship on the horizon became a championship clinched, Cardwell was subbed into the game for SEC Tournament MVP Johni Broome.

The two have formed maybe the SEC’s best center duo. Cardwell would start on so many teams. But he’s stayed at Auburn. He’s behind a first-team All-SEC center now.

It’s a relationship that epitomizes why Auburn has won an SEC crown. It’s a team about depth. Where 10-to-11 guys have to fully buy in that their sum would be greater than their parts. It’s why Broome will play fewer than 25 minutes and be the leading scorer on this team but maybe not a true superstar like other big men across the country.

“It is worth it,” Broome said. “It always pays off. I’m willing to sacrifice my minutes for wins.”

With his MVP trophy, Broome walked off the back of the stage after the trophy presentation. He stepped down alone as the confetti cannons fired.

He sat on the court and held his trophies in the air, the confetti still swirling, almost hidden in the storm. He came to Auburn from Morehead State to play at the top level of college basketball.

He’ll leave a champion.

Matt Cohen covers sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com

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si.com

Auburn basketball has reached out to a talented guard in the transfer portal

Andrew Stefaniak

~2 minutes

Bruce Pearl is already getting his team ready for next season.

In this story:

Auburn Tigers

The Auburn basketball team just won the SEC Tournament and has since found out they will be a four-seed in the NCAA Tournament, starting things off against Yale. 

While Auburn is hoping to make a run to the Final Four, Coach Bruce Pearl and his coaching staff have to start looking at the transfer portal for next season and reaching out to players. 

One player the Auburn staff reached out to, according to Joe Tipton of On3, is former Central Arkansas guard Camren Hunter. The 6'4 guard did not play this season due to an injury, but during the 2022-23 season, he averaged 16.9 points, five rebounds, and 3.9 assists per game. 

Hunter shot 31.1% from three for the Bears two seasons ago, but looking at his form, he has a really good shooting stroke, and it would not come as much of a surprise if he raised that percentage next season. 

Guard play will be interesting for the Auburn Tigers, as you will have almost everyone back except for KD Johnson unless someone decides to enter the transfer portal. Five-star freshman Tahaad Pettiford will also be on the team next season and will be a star. 

Auburn will push hard after some big men in the portal, as Jaylin Williams and Johni Broome will both likely be gone after this season. The frontcourt will be the focus for the staff in the portal, but bringing in a talented guard like Hunter to add depth to a really good backcourt would be great for this Auburn team. 

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