Auburn Live Special: 1-on-1 with Tigers’ men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl

AUBURN — Auburn men’s basketball head coach Bruce Pearl sat down with Auburn Live recently to discuss a wide range of topics.

Pearl and the Tigers finished last season with 21 wins and a second-round exit in the NCAA Tournament. It was Auburn’s fourth NCAA Tournament appearance in the last five seasons (excluding the Covid shortened season when the tournament was cancelled).

Pearl and Co. are entering an offseason with five new additions to the team in Aden Holloway, Denver Jones, Chaney Johnson, Chad Baker-Mazara and Addarin Scott. Meanwhile, six players depart the program in Wendell Green Jr., Allen Flanigan, Zep Jasper, Stretch, Akingbola, Chance Westry and Yohan Traore.

On the coaching side, gone is former Auburn assistant of five years Wes Flanigan. He’s at Ole Miss working under Chris Beard again. Pearl filled that assistant position fairly quickly with former Texas Tech assistant Corey Williams. Pearl and the program are also allowed to add two additional full-time staff positions starting this summer that will be “on-campus” positions only with no off-campus recruiting abilities. Sources have indicated that Pearl is expected to fill those positions from within the program, elevating current assistants and then backfilling the positions they vacate.

And while five new scholarship players are entering the program, five more are returning in Johni Broome, Jaylin Williams, KD Johnson, Tre Donaldson and Chris Moore. Walk-on Lior Berman also returns and is expected to earn a scholarship.

It’s certainly a balanced mix of new and old blood entering the offseason.

Here’s the full Q&A from our time with Pearl on ups and downs of last season, NIL, the transfer portal, maintaining the basketball program’s culture and much more.

Q: Looking back, what do you attribute some of the ups and downs to last season?

Pearl: Looking back on the season, I’d like to start at the end of the year. We were playing really good basketball at the end of the year. That’s our job. To go in and go to Alabama and have a chance to win that game with our backs against the wall, really tough loss, crazy calls. We just didn’t get it done. Then to come home and beat Tennessee in a game we really had to have. Going to the tournament and going against an Arkansas team that always plays well because they’re so talented, they’re going to have four guys get drafted and they were a 10 seed in the SEC. That tells you the world we’re living in right now in our league.

Then going into the NCAA Tournament and beat one of the better teams in the Big Ten in Iowa, and beat them from start to finish. Then, outplay the number two team in the country in Houston for the first half and have a 10-point lead, tells you we were playing good basketball.

Now, coming to the beginning of the year, you lose two first-round draft picks in Walker (Kessler) and Jabari (Smith Jr.), and we’ve never had two first-round draft picks. You lose the best frontline in college basketball, but you bring back Jaylin Williams who most Jaylin Williams’s would have left Auburn when Jabari Smith came, but this Jaylin Williams didn’t because he loved Auburn. Jaylin Williams returning to that roster was huge. Then getting Johni Broome was huge. Steven Pearl did a great job of in the recruitment of Johni, and Johni answered a lot of questions about going from mid-major to high-major, could he and he certainly could and he certainly did offensively. He’s got to work harder defensively and be more of a factor rebounding and defending.

But to lose that and still bring back a team that was good enough to play with the best teams in the country, be nationally relevant, have College Gameday come to campus for the third time in three years short the Covid year, to continue to sell out Neville Arena and be the home court advantage that it is, to have some big road wins and non-conference wins, I mean, overall, it was a good year. It approached being a very good year, it wasn’t a great year. It certainly wasn’t a great year by the standards that we’ve set, but it was a good year.

Q: What does it say that some fans were critical of last year’s results due of the standards set the previous five seasons with a Final Four appearance, two regular season SEC titles, one SEC Tournament title, and a No. 2 finish in the league before Covid hit?

Pearl: I’d rather have it that way and feel like we’re a Top-25 program. Last year, it was still one of the top 10 seasons in the history of Auburn basketball, so you have to keep it in perspective, and I do, otherwise I’ll drive myself crazy. Listen, I don’t hear or read what the fans do say…I don’t have time. And I don’t like disappointing people, so it would probably hurt my feelings if I knew our fans were that upset. I thought our team played up to the level of its ability, I really do. I thought we hung in there. We had a lot of close losses, those are on me. We were in a lot of games.

Part of the reason we made the tournament was we go to Tennessee and about beat them. We go to Texas A&M and about beat them. We go to Alabama and should have beaten them…we only had the two losses at home…we didn’t lose to a bad team. I get it. Listen, with NIL, the transfer portal now, there’s a shift and here’s the shift: It’s way easier for someone to get something going.

It’s easier to get it going than keep it going. Now with NIL, you can get it going in a hurry, and the teams in the bottom of our league are playing really hard in that space. Now, in recruiting, it’s not about player development, it’s not winning championships, it’s not about sell-out crowds, it’s not about College Gameday, not about Neville Arena, not about our culture — all the things that were the foundation of the development of our program, which aren’t going to change under me. I’m old school, that stuff still matters. Our work ethic, the kind of guys we’re bringing in here, praying before our meals, loving our country, being an Auburn man, that’s the foundation of our program.

Thanks to On To Victory, we are able to compete in the NIL space, but we aren’t leading it. That fact is going to create a leveler playing field in league competition. That’s the biggest difference. A few years ago, Bruce Pearl expectations, our program was elevated above everyone else’s short of maybe Kentucky, Tennessee, we were right there. NIL has played a big factor in leveling the playing field.

Q: On the NIL and transfer portal front, in general, how would you best describe to people now the difficulty in managing your roster season to season?

Pearl: Roster management has never been more challenging. March, April and early May were three incredible work months for us. All day, all weekend, because of roster management. It broke my heart to lose some kids in the portal. It absolutely broke my heart to see some guys leave. That’s the nature of if you aren’t playing enough or don’t have enough of a role, get in the transfer portal and start to compete in the NIL space. If we don’t win, we don’t keep our jobs. Desperate people do desperate things. There’s a lot of desperation going on out there in NIL.

It’s interesting, I was listening to an interview with Charlie Baker, our new NCAA president, who I have not met and hope to meet and I hope he gets it fixed. But I heard during a College World Series game that there are a lot more horror stories about NIL than reality. Mr. Baker, I’m here to tell you, this is real. It’s not fiction. The NIL money that’s out there that’s being offered is real and it’s changed the game. I’m happy that our players, most of whom won’t be able to make the NBA are finally going to get a realistic scholarship. They can participate in some of the revenue sharing, they can participate because they can profit off their own name, image and likeness. The foundation of that is great. I’m a capitalist, I’m a Conservative, this is what made our country great.

At the same time, this free market and supply and demand has changed recruiting. There are no limits, there is no order, there is no structure. It’s free agency without a salary cap. If we’re going to have a National Collegiate Athletic Association, if we’re going Mohave a national champion, then there needs to be what the NCAA had, and that’s more of a consistent, fair, similar playing field. Every state is doing their own thing, they’re all running to the bottom, and as a result, having a national set of rules is becoming more difficult. We have to try and get a handle on it.

That all said, still what we’re doing is amazing. That all said, the model is still terrific. The NCAA should have been more aggressive, they should have settled the Ed O’Bannon case years ago, they shouldn’t have fought it. It was a losing battle. They should have settled it and they should have started compensating the students years ago. There needs to be a national plan to get us all on the same playing field.

Q: How was the recent trip to Washington D.C. with AD John Cohen, president Chris Roberts, football coach Hugh Freeze and women’s basketball coach Johnnie Harris?

Pearl: The trip to Washington D.C. with the SEC was terrific. They all understand the problem and they all understand the urgency. We did not do a great job of coming with a solution to the problem That’s what the leadership needs to do. Whether that’s Mr. Baker at the NCAA, the commissioners of the five power conferences, coaches association, people way smarter than me and better lawyers than me, need to get their heads together and come to Congress with a plan.

Q: Looking at recruiting, how do you balance recruiting high school seniors versus transfer portal players when building your roster each season?

Pearl: The last two years, the top 100 high school players in the country, roughly between 16 and 18 of those players each of the last two years averaged double-digit minutes and double-digit points in Power Five. That means if you aren’t a McDonald’s All-American or very rarely not a large percentage of the top 100, you’re just not playing as much as you used to play. The grad transfer, the transfer portal, because of exceptions, one-time transfer is fine. I used to sit out somebody all the time and get a year older and a year better. I love bringing guys in and having them sit out and what a benefit that was, and I never looked at sitting out as a penalty. It was about getting bigger, getting stronger, getting academically more comfortable, investing in your body, your game and academics, and it also helped with graduation rates.

We don’t hear anything about graduation rates anymore, nothing about APR, nothing about progress towards degrees, none of that stuff that used to carry the day. We’re still doing a great job with all that stuff. Make it a one-time transfer and if you decide to use the one-time transfer to be eligible right away, great, use it. If you don’t want to use it and you want to sit out, you still have it in your back pocket in case you want to use it.

Now, they transfer, they get eligible right away, then they transfer again and appeal it, and win all these appeals for mental health or other challenges because the NCAA doesn’t want to fight that fight. The NCAA has told us, we’re not granting appeals. That’s wha tour compliance people have told us, so we didn’t bring in any transfer folks on appeal. There are a lot of guys out there that had already transferred that we could have gotten, that we chose not to take because this is what the NCAA said. We’ll see what happens in the fall about who does and doesn’t.

Love our guys, the idea is getting older. We’ll take one or two high school players every year, one or two, maybe four in two years, four or five in two years. The days of taking four and five high schoolers every year are over right now. The NCA Tournament showed us that, you have to get older. We got a roster at Auburn that’s older and more experienced.

Q: Do you anticipate every season being a new story and essentially starting over each year?

Pearl: Every year you’re going to have to start over. One of the advantages we have at Auburn is generally speaking, people don’t want to leave Auburn because it’s such a great place. Generally speaking, even the guys that left last year didn’t want to leave. Stretch (Akingbola) wasn’t going to play in front of Johni or Dylan Cardwell — I’m so happy for Stretch that he’s going to George Washington. Love him, going to graduate from Auburn. If we would have lost Johni or Dylan, we would have loved for him to come back and I think he would have come back.

Al (Flanigan) was going to the pros. Wendell (Green Jr.) did go pro and I’m excited for Wendell. I was disappointed to see the two freshmen leave, broke my heart. I think both are going to be good players in the future and it could have happened here, but they weren’t playing enough early in their careers. They thought they could d play earlier somewhere else. Unfortunately, the rules tell kids to flee, not fight, and I don’t like. Love the guys we brought in.

Love Aden (Holloway) as a freshman to come in and compete with Tre Donaldson. Tre Donaldson has had a phenomenal spring and summer, as far as how hard he’s worked and playing. Those two guys are going to give us really good point guard play. They both do different things. Aden has some special in him and he can really shoot it. The work ethic of this team will be the best work ethic I’ve ever had. Breakfast Club, guys coming in a 6:30 in the morning on their own, we have several or eight guys every single day.

Denver Jones, K.D. Johnson are your typical scoring guards. We’ll miss Zep Jasper’s defense, we’ll miss his leadership, we’ll miss one of the best on-ball defenders in the country. Denver is a great shooter, great shooter, and he’s in the right space defensively. K.D. is a great athlete and had one of the best spring and summer he’s ever had as far as his work ethic. We’re going to find out how good he can be this year. Allen Flanigan was playing great at the end of last year and it would have been nice to see what he could have done coming back for a graduate year, but he decided to leave, whether that’s go pro or transfer. Disappointed to see Al leave because he played so well at the end of the year and played so hard.

Chris Moore, Lior Berman, and then Chad Baker (Mazara) was someone we recruited kind of late. Junior college player, won championships in junior college, really talented player, knows how to play, and can really shoot it. When we get his body a little bigger, a little stronger, Chad’s got a great upside. He can really play. He’s long. He’s good kid and hard worker. As a sophomore at San Diego State, before he went to junior college last year, he had 18 points in the first half against Creighton in a NCAA Tournament game. Chad can play. Chris is tough as nails, then Lior Berman, a guy I have complete confidence in.

The power forward spot, we have Jaylin Williams. How do you recruit to a Jaylin Williams? Who wants to come in and play behind Jaylin Williams? Well, Chaney Johnson didn’t come in to play behind Jaylin Williams. Chaney Johnson came in to challenge Jaylin and maybe move Jaylin to another position, maybe one of those guys can play the three spot. Chaney Johnson comes in as a Division II player humble, hungry, talented. We saw it first hand when we played against him, one of our hardest workers. He’s very skilled offensively can go by you, make shots, athletic and bouncy. He’s going to play. Jaylin’s had great offseason and is going to build on what he started last year.

And then Dylan and Johni on the frontline. Dylan is going to be more aggressive offensively this year, and is elite defensively, rebounding, shot blocking, rim protecting. Johni, elite offensively, got to the foul line more than other player in our league inside, can shoot, put it on the floor, can pass it, play make it, is physical, motor needs to run on defense and rebounding and rim protection, otherwise he would have been in the NBA Draft. That’s it in a nutshell.

That’s 11 guys on scholarship, and we’ll probably put another walk-on on scholarship. Then there’s another guy, AD (Adarrin Scott) on the frontline. Another junior college player who was a guy that was a single-digit scorer and rebounder, but we think has some really good upside. We think in a year from now, not that he might not compete this year…he’s going to give us some depth on the frontline. He can do some things.

Q: How do you address some of the offensive inefficiencies from last season?

Pearl: We’re better offensively. Defense could be an issue for us, because Al was physical, Wendell could defend and stole the ball a lot. We’ll be better offensively this year, we’ll shoot it better this year. We have some guys that know how to play. I’m making a few offensive adjustments in my system this year. I’m going to try a little more five out, we’ve always been four out and spread, and I think our personnel is more suited to it. It’s a work in progress.

I like my roster, I like my depth, and I like the work ethic on this team. It’ll be a work in progress. This team will be picked sixth or seventh in the SEC. You’ll have Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Texas, A&M, those five will all be picked ahead of us. I understand the talent on the roster, the depth. We’ll be in that next group. Florida could be in there with us. That’s about where we were picked last year, it’s about where we finished. I like the position we’re in.

Q: When you talk about culture, new players, new assistant coach, how do you maintain your culture year in and year out?

Pearl: Part of the way you maintain the culture is living the Auburn Creed. Simply doing the things God would have us do. Praying before meals, loving your country, doing community service, not being jealous of another’s man success, do I make the other four guys out there better? You’ll notice, a mid-major player in Denver Jones, two junior college players, a Division II player, these guys are humble and hungry. That’s part of our culture. They are so blessed and excited to be at Auburn, and their work ethic is really good. And the guys that return are really good team players. Then you bring in a guy like Corey Williams, so I’ve got to live with, you want to judge me? Judge me by the people I surround myself with. Judge me by my staff, judge me by the character of our players, and I’m fine with that.

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