On the whole, It isn’t easy to fathom what Bruce Pearl walked into at Auburn in 2014. It was not just that Auburn was a College basketball betting loser of a program with no support. It was that many fans were outright hostile to what the basketball team had become. The first thing to know about Auburn is that football is king. Correlate it always was and always will be. Getting folks on the Plains to care about basketball has always been daunting, even in the good times. Yet Pearl proved to be an immediate Pied Piper.
2023-24 Auburn Tigers Basketball Preview
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2023-24 Auburn Tigers Basketball Outlook
Bruce Pearl has charisma and magnetism that is contagious. Gamblers naturally gravitate to Pearl, even if they aren’t basketball fans. Most important of all, Pearl is a big-time online betting winner.
The story at Auburn Basketball is truly the story of making the right coaching hire. Certainly, there had been history before Bruce Pearl joined the program in 2014. But the Tigers have been living their best lives since Pearl came aboard. This is a team that spent much of the beginning of the century as an afterthought in the SEC. But one that Pearl has turned into an NCAABB betting contender.
First and foremost was the Final Four run back in 2019, the first in the program’s history. Auburn rose to the cream of the crop in a short time under Pearl, who led a rebuilding effort in his first few seasons with the program. Now, he’s led the Tigers to three total trips to the Big Dance, robbed of a fourth trip by the pandemic three seasons ago. Not only is this team no longer an afterthought, but they are remaining a contender even as the roster continues to change.
There was an impressive amount of talent on that Final Four team, and the same can be said of more recent teams. Although there are high expectations again at Auburn, this program will surely miss big men Walker Kessler and Jabari Smith, who are both in the NBA after starring at the college game last year. The positive at Auburn is that those are the two biggest losses. In turn, there are a few intriguing new pieces for the Tigers.
Last year’s team fell in the second round to Miami, a disappointing end for a talented roster with those two impressive pieces in the frontcourt. However, this doesn’t change the narrative at Auburn. This program is in an unbelievably better position than even five seasons ago.
Except for a down year two seasons ago, they’ve been a contender for the SEC crown every year, with two regular season titles already in their pocket. Nobody is sleeping on Auburn like they might have been five seasons ago. On the other hand, this Auburn team is not exactly in the same position as last year or even a few years ago for that Final Four team. There are question marks on this roster, but there’s also a significant amount of talent.
Even if the frontcourt remains a strength, the backcourt needs to play much better than last year. While those two forwards became stars and draft picks, it was the backcourt letting Auburn down at times, especially in that Tournament loss.