The Auburn men’s basketball team surprised us at the SEC tournament when they beat Mississippi State after struggling into the tournament with a six-game losing streak.
We were even happier when they beat Texas A&M.
We were astounded and ecstatic when they beat LSU after KT Harrell’s buzzer beater forced them into overtime.
While the tournament ended after a loss to the unbeaten No. 1 team, Kentucky, the basketball team had successfully proven they are well on their way to improvement.
Auburn’s basketball team hadn’t won a game in the SEC tournament since 2009 and had only won two games in the tournament since 1999.
For the last decade Auburn has been essentially irrelevant on the hardwood, despite former coach Barbee outspending Kentucky on recruiting in the 2012-2013 season. According to USA Today’s findings, Auburn spent about $464,000 while Kentucky averaged $400,000.
It was still a losing season. It was also coach Bruce Pearl’s first losing season in his 21 years of coaching. Auburn ended with 15 games won and 20 games lost.
There was not much change in the regular seasons win-to-loss ratio and Pearl has a long road ahead to make the team a regular threat to other teams in the SEC.
Pearl as made it abundently clear the team can’t improve until the talent does, but he needs to continue to strive to get the best out of the players he has.
However, improvement in the team was evident in how they performed at the SEC tournament. Pearl has gotten a lot from players he did not recruit and is expected to have success during recruiting season.
This year he has gotten six recruits — five commited with letters of intent and one, Danjel Purifoy, who is expected to sign a letter of intent before the end of the summer. Three of them are four-star recruits. Trayvon Reed has already joined the team and Horace Spencer will come next year. The others are three-star recruits.
Also, despite the mediocre season, Pearl changed and renewed the atmosphere around Auburn’s men’s basketball program.
He spent more time than any other coach on campus hyping up the basketball season, visiting classes, buying lunch for students at Mama Goldberg’s and taking pictures on the concourse. His promotions filled the stands with record-breaking numbers of fans in attendance.
The team seemed excited to play under Pearl, a drastic change from Barbee.
Pearl did well motivating his team to keep playing through the SEC tournament despite low expectations. He will have to keep up that motivation to keep fans in the stands next year.
With Pearl’s performance this season we fully expect him to have a stellar recruiting class and a much better season next year.
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