'Did it peak too soon?' Bruce Pearl reflects on Auburn basketball's season, NCAA Tournament exit

Bennett Durando
Montgomery Advertiser

AUBURN — For the last weekend of the college basketball season, Auburn coach Bruce Pearl was in New Orleans for the Final Four and for sophomore Walker Kessler's Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Award.

Pearl returned to Auburn reflecting on the season — which included the Tigers' rise to No. 1 in the polls for the first time in program history — as well as its ending.

Auburn won 19 straight games at one point, then lost in the SEC Tournament quarterfinal to No. 8 seed Texas A&M and in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to 10-seed Miami. Pearl called his 2021-22 team special and underscored that he thought Kessler and Jabari Smith were the best frontline in the country. 

The special season unraveled against two underdogs. Both were hot. Was it tough luck, or had Auburn peaked too soon?

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"I think Texas A&M and Miami both proved to be buzz saws. You could certainly make a very strong case that we weren’t playing our best basketball at the end, there's no doubt about it," Pearl said. "And at some point during the season, whether it was the Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky, on the road at a couple places where we were playing great basketball — if this team did peak then, did it peak too soon? Or did it peak in time to be able to win those games? And then you don’t win those games and you don’t peak, then you find yourself in a different situation."

Pearl rewound all the way to the preseason, when Auburn beat UAB in a closed-door scrimmage. UAB was eventually a 12-seed in March Madness. Pearl said his team was forced to give itself a wake-up call early because of tough opponents in the scrimmage and nonconference schedule. (The Tigers were in a tournament that included UConn, Loyola, Baylor and Michigan State.)

"This team better get better in a hurry, and it did," Pearl said. "I think we worked so hard to get good enough early to win, yeah, that I would say we wound up peaking sometime at the end of January, early February."

By the time Auburn matched up against Miami with a chance to reach the Sweet 16, the Tigers had lost four of their last 10. Pearl pointed out Miami's experienced roster, with four 24-year-olds, and he noted that Jim Larranaga's Hurricanes led eventual national champion Kansas at halftime in the Elite Eight.

Then the Auburn coach turned the attention back to himself.

"I think what I would have done offensively is somehow figure out a way ... to hang in there early and not turn the sucker over," Pearl said, noting Miami's consistent ability to start fast. "Not that I didn’t tell the team the No. 1 thing we’ve got to do is take care of the basketball. But I might have done some things with our offense and our play calls and our pace to just kind of hang in there early.

"But Miami obviously did some things to disrupt us with their ball-screen defense and turning us over a little bit. And for the first time all season, Jabari (Smith) and Walker had off nights. We weren’t good enough, and I wasn’t good enough to overcome it."