Former Auburn Tigers forward KeyShawn Murphy not only quit on his team ahead of their first-round NIT matchup against the South Alabama Jaguars. He gave head coach Steven Pearl the cold shoulder.
As Pearl would later reveal, he didn't know what led to Murphy making that decision following his best season as a collegiate athlete. Murphy played three years with the Mississippi State Bulldogs and one with the Tigers and is out of eligibility.
Quitting on AU was Murphy's last relevant basketball memory after a storied career at Ramsay in Alabama's Class 5A and years of steady improvement in the SEC. AL.com's Joseph Goodman believes Murphy "went out like a loser" in his final act.
"The Tigers defeated South Alabama in the first round of the NIT, but starting big man KeShawn Murphy of Birmingham quit the team after the SEC tournament. No wonder Auburn was so terrible down the stretch. One of its best players (and Auburn’s top-rated transfer) hated playing for new coach Steven Pearl," Goodman wrote.
"Steven took the high road, saying he still loved Murphy, but he doesn’t get off that easy here. Didn’t Murphy get paid this season? Couldn’t he have at least honored that deal and stuck around until the end? I hate to say it, but Murphy went out like a loser. Perhaps his story would have been different if Poppa Pearl had coached this season instead of son Steven."
Can Steven Pearl recover from disastrous debut with Auburn?
Murphy's stunt was merely the latest in a long line of issues for the Tigers during Pearl's debut season. To be fair, many controllable narrative issues stem from how Bruce handed the program to him and how Bruce spoke of his son's team on CBS airwaves around Selection Sunday. All of it ultimately worked against Steven.
As for the uncontrollables, there was Emeka Opurum's season-ending injury, Keyshawn Hall's seeming unwillingness to play team basketball, and a schedule that proved too difficult to contend with to make the Big Dance.
That they came close to making it might mean something. It definitely means something that AU's four-year NCAA tournament streak is over.
Can Steven recover from this? It's unclear, because it's anyone's guess what the 2026-27 Auburn basketball roster will look like right now. It may be another nearly entirely fresh set of faces.