Steven Pearl states Auburn’s case to make NCAA Tournament after loss to Tennessee
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Auburn’s loss to Tennessee does not change Steven Pearl’s stance that AU deserves to make the NCAA Tournament.
Asked about whether his team would accept an NIT bid, Pearl said the Tigers are still thinking Big Dance.
“We deserve to be in the (NCAA) Tournament,” Pearl said, warning media members that the rant was coming.
“Here’s the thing. What people have to understand is, like, it’s my job to fight for my team. 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.
“Some of the biggest things that we’re told to do in scheduling, especially during football season, is to get some of these prime time matchups for TV ratings, to compete with football. That’s why we play teams like Houston and Purdue and Arizona, we go to the Players Era. We do all those things.
“So we scheduled a really hard out-of-conference schedule. We had some really quality wins in that streak. If you look at — this tournament is a team of who you can beat.”
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Pearl continued his case, breaking down how Auburn compares to other teams on the bubble.
“If we’re going to look at six teams on the bubble right now, Texas, SMU, VCU, Miami Ohio, Missouri, New Mexico, we have more top-25 NET wins than everyone in that group but Missouri,” Pearl said. “We have more top-50 wins than everyone in that group. We have two top-25 road neutral wins, more than everyone else on the bubble. We have more wins over the projected field than anyone else on the bubble.
“If you look at the major metrics that they use — NET, KenPom, KPI, Strength of Record, and Wins Above the Bubble — we are better than every team in that group in at least five out of the seven categories, and in a couple of them six of the seven.
“Our strength of schedule, overall we’re at three, and out of conference we’re in 15. If you look at the rest of that list, they’re far below us as far as the schedule that we played.”
Thursday’s loss to Tennesssee drops Auburn to 17-16 overall and unable to win any more games now eliminated from the SEC Tournament. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi put Auburn in the First Four Out with no path to make the NCAA Tournament.
It will be a long 72 hours for Auburn to wait until Selection Sunday, but Pearl feels his team did enough.
“Our guys have some of the best wins in college basketball. This team deserves to be in the tournament,” Pearl said. “It’s a team that can win games in the tournament. I think they’ve done enough ultimately to have their name called on Selection Sunday.”
"We deserve to be in the tournament." — Steven Pearl makes his case for the Auburn Tigers. #WarEagle pic.twitter.com/RHwLKX3Vfk
— Auburn Tigers | AL.com (@aldotcomTigers) March 12, 2026
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
