Steven Pearl was waiting for the right question and moment to make his case for why his Auburn team belongs in the NCAA Tournament despite a 17-16 record and a loss to Tennessee in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals on Thursday.
The first-year Auburn coach didn’t hold back.
Pearl went over the Tigers’ strength of schedule, quality wins, metrics from KenPom and NET and every single thing he could do to make the case that Auburn should hear its name called on Sunday evening when the selections for the 2026 NCAA Tournament are made.
“We scheduled a really hard out-of-conference schedule,” Pearl said. “We had some really quality wins in that streak.”
Sure, having the big dogs of Arizona, Michigan and Purdue on a non-conference schedule will impress anyone, but what the Tigers did against them – losing by an average of 29 points to the three – isn’t exactly making a case for why you are one of the best teams without an auto-bid to the dance.
“Our guys have some of the best wins in college basketball,” Pearl continued. “This team deserves to be in the tournament.”
Steven Pearl makes Auburn's case for NCAA Tournament bid
Those wins include a neutral-site game against St. John’s, in Gainesville against SEC regular-season champion Florida and in Neville Arena against Arkansas. Those all happened before the calendar turned to February, and what have the Tigers done since then? Lost nine out of their last 12 games, including an embarrassing home loss to Ole Miss, along with dud outings at Mississippi State and Oklahoma.
“What people have to understand is, like, it's my job to fight for my team,” Pearl said. “It's my job to be my team's advocate. It's my job to speak about all the things that this group's done.”
If this group has done anything, it has played itself right out of the NCAA Tournament with a February and March to forget, and a second half in the loss to the Vols in Nashville that was a complete collapse in every single way.
Maybe Auburn will make the last four in and play in Dayton early next week. Right now, it seems that Pearl was just close to earning his first trip to the NCAA Tournament as a head coach in his debut season.