ATLANTA — Just over 24 hours from his second Sweet 16 contest at Auburn, head coach Bruce Pearl and his Tigers took to the podium Thursday afternoon inside of State Farm Arena ahead of the matchup with the No. 5 seed Michigan Wolverines.
Below is everything Pearl said at the podium and inside the locker room here in the peach state.
On roster construction and the transfer portal opening:
“I'm not spending any time on it. I'm focused on, like Coach said, what we're doing. I've made a couple calls, but not many, just to reach out. We've got a big staff, so our guys are just letting the potential prospects know that we've got work to do. Hopefully we're working for a couple weeks. But when our season is over, we'll begin to put that roster together next year.
“I think the only other thing I would say about it is this. I was also on the NAB committee for trying to figure out when the best time to open the portal. I'm glad that the portal has gone from 45 days to 30 days because I think 30 days is enough time for those guys to decide whether they want to stay or whether they want to go.
“I think the reason for the timing of doing it just after the Sweet 16 is almost all the teams in the country except 16 teams the season's over. So if you're a student-athlete and you're at another Division I institution and your season was over at the beginning of March, you're supposed to have to wait three or four weeks until the Final Four's over before you can move on with the rest of your life?
“So I think the National Association of Basketball coaches kind of looked at, hey, what might be best for all the student-athletes when they decided to kind of do it at this window. Yeah, it's a little inconvenient for 16 teams, but these other student-athletes need to be able to figure out what's going on for the rest of their lives.
“And just so you know, I'm also not a big fan of this transfer every year. We're teaching the kids to flee, not fight. I think the one-time transfer is great. I think the grad transfer is great. I always had guys transfer and came in, and in that year where they were not eligible to play, they got caught up academically, they got caught up physically, and they were so much more valuable after spending a year on campus understanding the system, and it would be like bringing back another veteran.
“I don't make the rules, but I got to play by them.”
On Auburn’s recruiting presence in Atlanta:
“It's great to be in Atlanta, and it's great to point out the quality of Atlanta basketball, particularly in high school basketball. It's as good as it is anywhere in the country.
“But honestly, winning here won't mean anything when it comes to recruiting anymore. I love to talk about Walker Kessler and Jabari Smith and Chuma Okeke and JT Thor and Sharife Cooper and Jabari Smith and about seven or eight Atlanta kids that are in the NBA that developed at Auburn, won championships. But right now, when it comes to recruiting, I don't know how much that means to an Atlanta high school player.
“Right now it is more about the NIL. It's become way more transactional. They don't care about the fact that I've graduated 46 student-athletes in the last 11 years, that I've graduated 33 African American men in the last 11 years. That stuff used to matter. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter as much anymore.
“It still matters to me.”
On Michigan director of operations and former Auburn player KT Harrell:
“KT was a great player for us at Auburn my very first year. My first year at Auburn, the team had one or two players that belonged to the SEC. KT belonged not only to the SEC, but he was an SEC All-Star. We didn't have that much to go around him, and our guys knew it. Our guys had, as you would expect, a very tough year during regular season, but they never quit.
“Yet our guys knew on that first year's team, KT's team, that we were going to get it going. They could tell by the way we were coaching, the way we were recruiting, the way we were treating them. I so wanted KT's team my first year to be a part of that foundation, to be a part of what was going to happen, and I didn't think it was possible for them because we just weren't talented enough.
“That team came to Nashville and beat Mississippi State, beat Texas A&M, and beat LSU, three huge upsets, and then we played on the Saturday against Kentucky, a team that won the National Championship. We didn't belong in any of those games. That first year team, KT Harrell's team laid the groundwork for Auburn basketball in the future.”
On point guard Tahaad Pettiford:
“Tahaad, he comes from a great family, and he's got great high school coaching and great AAU coaching. His dad has handled him like as good as any father could. He always played him up. He always played him against older kids. And Tahaad was always the smallest guy on the playground. He was always the littlest guy out there.
“So therefore, he had so much to overcome, yet he might have been the best player out there. Tahaad was somewhat overlooked. He was ranked 25th, 26th coming out of high school. There aren't 25 high school freshmen in college this year that are better than Tahaad Pettiford. But he's got a chip on his shoulder. He's a little guy, and every time he goes out there to prove it.
“I was wrong about Tahaad. I thought Tahaad would come in and be a scoring guard. Don't worry about running the team. Don't worry about being a point guard. Just come out and bang shots, guard a little bit, make stuff happen, just do what you do.
“Instead, I recognized that, wow, he actually can handle the team. He can break pressure. He can close games. He can be a scoring point guard. So he's exceeded my expectations as far as being able to play point guard rather than just being a scoring guard.”
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Patrick is a junior from Auburn, Alabama, double majoring in journalism and marketing. He started with The Plainsman in the fall of 2022.
You can follow him on X (Twitter) at @patrickabingham
