Steven Pearl Argues Auburn Deserves NCAA Tournament Berth Following 96-84 Loss to Bama

Following Auburn’s 96-84 loss to Alabama in the IBOB, with the Tide sweeping the Tigers this season, Auburn’s head coach, Steven Pearl, made his case for why the committee shouldn’t punish his team, with the first-year head coach talking about his team’s strength of schedule, which is within the top three in the league. He also mentioned the teams Auburn beat earlier this season, the Big East champions St. John's and the SEC champions Florida. 

Get our free mobile app

Despite Auburn being 16-15 overall and 7-11 in conference play, the Tigers’ head coach believes his team still has the resume to make it to the dance in March, with many brackets listing Auburn as the first team out on Selection Sunday. Still, Pearl thinks that his team shouldn’t be punished for playing the No.2 strength of schedule in the country, according to KenPom, with the team from the Plains facing four conference champions (Big East, Big 12, SEC, and Big Ten), with Pearl highlighting that all of these games were on the road. The Tigers won two of the four games. 

“We’ve put ourselves in obviously a difficult situation, but we also have a great situation, which is we play in the best league in college basketball, it’s the deepest league in college basketball. We have five of the best wins in the country. We have the best wins in college basketball at Florida. If you look at our quality wins and if you look at other teams in the bubble, I don't think those teams get those wins, I just don’t, so we’ve put ourselves in a position to be considered, and I think our resume stands up against anybody’s.” Pearl added, “I’m not sure what the number would be tonight after the game i don’t know if anybody has Kenpom pulled up but i’d imagine that we finished at one or two n the country in strength of schedule overall, which is what the committee asks us to do, and we played against some of the best teams in college basketball. We went 2-2 against the conference champions of the SEC, the Big East, the Big Ten, and the Big 12, and we didn’t play any of those games at home, so we have enoguh quality wins to be deserving to be in this tournament but we understand that we gotta go to Nashville and make a run so that we don’t have to be sweating it out on selection sunday.”

Auburn will need a successful week next week in Nashville, where the Tigers will start the SEC Tournament off as a 12 seed, where they will face 13 seed Mississippi State on Wednesday, March 11, at 2 p.m., where the winner of that game will play No.5 seed Tennessee on Thursday, March 12, at 2 p.m.

Follow @Micahnichols0 on X (formerly known as Twitter) and tune into Tide100.9 for all your Alabama basketball, football, and baseball coverage.