The Stretch 4: Auburn is close to adding an international player
The Tigers will have a new roster — or close to it, depending on Tahaad Pettiford — next season. And Bruce Pearl's ready to get to work.
LAKE MARTIN — You would expect Bruce Pearl to be tired right now.
Pearl is just a little more than a month from leading Auburn basketball to its greatest season in program history: An outright SEC championship in the toughest edition of the conference and a second run to the Final Four.
The Tigers went all-in on experience this past season, taking full advantage of the final COVID waivers. Auburn fell short of a national title, but it accomplished virtually everything else in a historic campaign.
All that experience meant a lot of expired eligibility. Now, in mid-May, Pearl is in charge of a roster that is waiting to hear if it will be able to return a single player — point guard phenom Tahaad Pettiford, who is in the NBA Draft process.
Pearl and his staff have signed nine new players for next season’s team, making the last several weeks a hectic roster reloading process. But Pearl isn’t worn out from it.
“I feel good,” Pearl said Monday afternoon, just before the start of his annual Fore The Children charity golf event, benefitting Children’s Harbor. “I was really tired after the last two seasons, I’ll be honest with you. I feel good this year. I feel good this May. We’ve been going, and we’ve done pretty well.
“I give John Cohen and his staff a lot of credit because they knew that this was going to be a year where I was going to require more NIL. I don’t mind telling you, last year our basketball team was about eighth in our league in NIL. … Having to replace 11 guys, we’ve had to make a greater investment. And John Cohen and On To Victory and the donors were prepared and put us in a position we could put a roster together.”
The roster isn’t quite done yet. Pettiford’s decision, which will likely come to a conclusion within the next week, is the headline-making move still left to be made.
But Auburn is closing in on another addition — from a rather unorthodox spot for the program — and there’s still room for more to join.
Pearl likes his new-look roster. But he knows that lack of returning experience is going to create a large number of doubters on the outside.
And Pearl is never going to turn down an opportunity to play that card.
“There’s no question that we will be the most difficult team in the country to predict where we’re gonna finish,” Pearl said. “I mean, there’s 16 teams in the SEC, they’re not gonna put us in the top five or six for sure. It’ll be interesting to see where they do pick us, because everybody’s new. … But I like the group.
“I think it's going to be a group that works hard. I think we've got really good character guys, and we've got to reinvent ourselves. We've got to reinvent our culture. This summer is going to be more important for me, having breakfast and Bible studies, than ever before. Just trying to get these guys to understand who we are and what we do and why we do it the way we do it.”
For the latest on Auburn basketball’s roster, here is a special edition of The Stretch 4 from what we heard from Pearl on Monday at Lake Martin — starting with a potential international addition.