Heading into his second season as the head coach of Auburn basketball, Steven Pearl is hoping his team will take a step up in the 2026-27 season.
Coming off a run to the Final Four prior to Pearl's first season as head coach, the Tigers returned only one player from that roster in Tahaad Pettiford. It was a tall task to essentially build a team from scratch, and then several players struggled with injuries that kept them from playing at all. It was a tough year for Auburn basketball, which ended up just narrowly missing the NCAA Tournament but going on to win the NIT Championship.
Although a number of Tigers did enter the transfer portal at the end of last season, two starters and two rotation players are returning: Tahaad Pettiford, Kevin Overton, Simon Walker and Blake Muschalek. These guys know each other and can help establish team chemistry with all the newcomers.
And three of those newcomers are expected to help fix a major problem that Steven Pearl's first Tigers team dealt with: size. 7-foot Narcisse Ngoy, 7-foot-1 Bukky Oboye and 6-foot-10 Owen Freeman all jumped on board with Auburn basketball during the offseason, and could help make a big difference for Pearl's squad in year two.
So far, Pearl and his staff have focused on getting to know the individual abilities of all their new players this summer, and are also putting a lot of emphasis on finding the best defenders on the squad. According to the head coach, things are going well.
"You've seen some progression of guys making improvements, and a different guy plays well every week, which is encouraging," Pearl said, per AL.com. "But you really won't know anything until you go out there and play against other competition. So far, our guys have had a good summer to this point."
The Tigers' first opportunity to face other competition will come later this summer, when Pearl takes his team to Greece for this year's foreign tour. Auburn basketball previously visited Italy in 2017 and then Israel in 2022 under former head coach Bruce Pearl. The NCAA used to allow foreign tours every four years, but recently changed their rules to allow foreign tours annually. With at least seven new players coming on board, it will be an important chance for the Tigers to learn to gel and play as a team ahead of the 2026-27 season.
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