Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl wants to 'dispel the rumor' that SEC was overrated

Bennett Durando
Montgomery Advertiser

AUBURN — Looking back on the 2021-22 college basketball season Wednesday, Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl was adamant that in the SEC's lackluster outcomes in the NCAA Tournament were not indicative of the league's overall strength.

“I’m going to dispel the rumor that the SEC was overrated during the course of the season," Pearl said. "That’s just not right. Wrong. Demonstrated that throughout the year. I’ll use Kentucky as an example. Kentucky beat North Carolina by how many? And won at Kansas in like, February, by how many? ... I say that with North Carolina and Kansas playing the national championship game. That’s just a fact. We won the Big 12-SEC Challenge. I think we should have gotten more than six teams in, but we didn’t.

"Why didn’t we advance in the NCAA Tournament?" he continued. "Partly due to matchups. I think partly due to the grind of the SEC this year. I’m not offering excuses. There’s no excuses here. I just — I just talked about answering questions and explanations. We have to ask the question: Why was Arkansas the only team that got to the Elite Eight, when there were probably three or four teams, including Auburn, that could’ve but didn’t? I can say for us the grind of being in that SEC regular season and trying to win that championship was grueling, and the only three games we lost were the court-storm at Arkansas, court-storm at Florida and at Tennessee."

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Auburn was a No. 2 seed in March Madness but lost in the second round to Miami, a 10-seed. Kentucky had it worse, losing to No. 15 seed St. Peter's on the first night of the tournament. Tennessee entered the tournament hot as a No. 3 but lost to 11-seed Michigan in the second round.

"I do think we never quite got a huge second wind that I know we got in (2019) after we finished fifth in the regular season and won our last four regular-season games," Pearl said, recalling Auburn's Final Four run. "Got hot in the tournament, got hot at the end and made our run."