Auburn basketball: Tigers offer 2024 five-star recruit

Bruce Pearl and the Auburn Tigers are getting in early on this elite 2024 recruit.

Despite just finishing the eighth grade, Tayshawn Bridges has already been offered a scholarship by Auburn basketball head coach Bruce Pearl. Bridges, who is the No. 3 overall recruit in the class of 2024 according to coast2coastpreps.com, announced via his Twitter that he had received the offer from the Tigers.

Auburn is Bridges’ second Division-I scholarship offer and first offer from a Power five school. The incoming freshman received an offer from Grambling State last month and received another offer from Florida State.

Bridges is a 6-foot-2. shooting guard out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and played travel basketball with the Wisconsin Playground Club.

The state of Wisconsin has produced several NBA players over the past few years including Tyler Herro, Henry Ellenson, Jordan Poole and Sam Dekker to name a few. While it’s still very early into his basketball career, it appears that Bridges has that kind of potential.

Bridges receiving an offer from Auburn also shows that Bruce Pearl is not afraid to recruit kids early and is oftentimes one of the first programs to offer a prospect.

Pearl of course, has heavy ties to the state of Wisconsin as he was the head coach of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for four seasons from 2001 until 2005. During that time, Pearl led the Panthers to an 86-38 record, three Horizon Conference championships and two NCAA Tournament appearances.

It also wouldn’t be the first time that Pearl has recruited Wisconsinites. Although he played his JUCO ball down in Florida, former Auburn star Cinmeon Bowers was originally from Milwaukee and was rated as the top JUCO prospect in the entire nation. Bowers was a part of Pearl’s first recruiting class at Auburn and averaged 11.4 points and 9.6 rebounds per game in his two seasons with the Tigers.

Auburn has also recently offered a trio of rising juniors from the class of 2022.