Bruce Pearl said so many stupid things leading into Selection Sunday, and Keyshawn Hall had made watching the Auburn Tigers men's basketball team so unenjoyable that few were bothered when AU was snubbed from the NCAA Tournament. Most were happy the misery that was the 2025-26 season had ended, though that feeling didn't last long after Auburn accepted an NIT bid on Sunday night.
Bruce made Steven a villain after he went after the Miami (OH) Redhawks for their strength of schedule. Still, though Pearl reneged on Miami (OH), he went after the SMU Mustangs during the Selection Sunday broadcast. He may have gone after the wrong Lone Star State squad, though.
Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller made a great argument for why it was the Texas Longhorns, not SMU, that made the field unjustly over Auburn. It went beyond the obvious of the Tigers being ahead of the Longhorns in every non-KenPom metric.
The schedule punished Auburn for losses to the Mississippi State Bulldogs and Ole Miss Rebels, but Texas didn't get punished for losing to both Mississippi schools and the Arizona State Sun Devils during the regular season.
Miller believes College Basketball scheduling could soon go the way of College Football scheduling: no longer putting big-name opponents on the schedule for the fear of being snubbed come playoff time.
"Auburn also won its head-to-head game against Texas. Granted, it was a six-point home win for the Tigers, but still. That happened. But because Texas finished 18-14 while Auburn finished 17-16, the selection committee went with the Longhorns. Cool. Cool. Here's the thing about that record, though," Miller prefaced before saying, "If you take away Texas' non-D1 win over Chaminade and all the home games against teams who ended up 275th or worse in the NET—AKA, the cream puff, cupcake, gimme games that any major conference team should win—Texas went 10-14 while Auburn went 16-16.
"And if Auburn's "bad" losses to Mississippi State and Ole Miss are what ultimately did in the Tigers, why was the committee cool with Texas' losses to Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and Arizona State? Both resumes were hideous, but both did end up with six wins over the field, with Auburn's road win over Florida clearly out-classing anything the Longhorns brought to the table. Because Auburn faced (and lost to) Michigan, Arizona, Houston and Purdue, though, they simply accumulated too many losses. It's a shame to see, and it might be the beginning of the end of teams really challenging themselves in nonconference play."
Bruce Pearl was an SEC shill for not going after Texas
Bruce's behavior looks even worse when you realize he didn't go after the SEC, even though he literally said AU was snubbed because there were too many teams from the "It Just Means More" conference in the tournament. This is because the SEC is a cult to those in power, even though fans of SEC programs don't want to see other teams in the conference win.
The Mustangs were a stand-in for the Longhorns. Bruce's bullying of a MAC school was the oldest college sports talking media head trick in the book of talking down to the smaller conferences that don't generate as much revenue.
Bruce's media career is off to an abhorrent start. He should quit while he's ahead, unless he wants to start calling out the actual problems in the sport and not just peddle his own warped, biased worldview, which makes his son Steven and Auburn look worse by proxy.