Mark Wiedmer
The first time I encountered Bruce Pearl, though I had no way of knowing it was Pearl, he was dressed as Boston College’s Eddie the Eagle mascot and cheering wildly for BC at a 1981 NCAA Tournament game against Anthony Teachey and his Wake Forest teammates on a Sunday afternoon inside Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Flapping his wings and dancing about, ever the showman, the officials almost threw him out, but BC went on to upset the Demon Deacons and later reached the regional finals.
Pearl was back in Coleman on Saturday afternoon coaching his top-ranked Auburn Tigers against No. 2 Alabama in the basketball version of the Iron Bowl. 44 years after his one-game star turn as Eddie the Eagle — the regular mascot was sick that day, which prompted BC coach Dr. Tom Davis to ask Pearl, a student manager, to fill in — he returned as Bruce the War Eagle to orchestrate a wire-to-wire, 94-85 thumping of the Crimson Tide .
“We performed like a No. 1 team, we prepared like a No. 1 team,” said Pearl afterward. “That’s because we are the No. 1 team.”
It’s time to launch a campaign to put the coach of that No. 1 team in the Hall of Fame. Yes, Pearl has had an NCAA show-cause penalty placed on him for lying about recruiting violations. His chief violation at Tennessee other than the lies? He invited a recruit to a barbecue at his house before the kid was a rising high school senior. As I’ve often written of Pearl’s transgressions, he torpedoed his career and his reputation with a thousand paper cuts.
But now he’s back with his best team ever at a program that had never been to the Final Four until he took it there in 2019, beating a trio of the bluest of Blue Bloods in succession — Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky — to reach college hoops’ grandest stage.
And when he got there, only an inexplicably missed double-dribble call against Virginia’s Ty Jerome with less than five seconds to play kept the Tigers from a national championship showdown with Texas Tech.
Before you say guys with NCAA misdeeds in their past shouldn’t be in the Hall (and I don’t know that I would disagree with that), those three Blue Blood, Hall of Fame coaches he beat — Kansas’s Bill Self, UNC’s Roy WIlliams and UK’s John Calipari — have all been in the NCAA’s crosshairs at one time or another.
But not only has Pearl won everywhere he’s been — Division II Southern Indiana, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Tennessee and Auburn — he’s made the game fun. He’s the PT Barnum of college hoops. Showing up at a Lady Vols game without a shirt and with a painted chest. Wearing the same gameday T-shirt the student body wears. Looking like a youth league baseball coach with his shirttail out as he paces up and down the sidelines. Occasionally shaking pom-poms after big wins. Just a big kid with a big heart and mind for the game he loves.
And, man, can he coach. Particularly situational basketball. An inbounds play coming out of a timeout. A junk zone to throw an opposing point guard off late. How good of a coach is Pearl at isolated moments? The late, great Pat Summitt once used an inbounds play Pearl gave her to win an important SEC game at Georgia in the final seconds.
“Best coach I’ve ever known coming out of a timeout,” said Summitt of that moment.
Or give a listen to Bama coach Nate Oats after Saturday’s loss. Rarely one to lavish praise on the opposing braintrust, Oats said this of his chief coaching rival: “Give Auburn a lot of credit. They're the number one team in the country for a reason. They (Auburn) did a great job, I thought, on the defensive end, trying to take away our threes. We didn't shoot it very well, they contested them. They did a good job contesting our shots at the rim. We had under 50 percent at the rim. You can't do that.”
Pearl has been on the right side of a 1-2 showdown against an instate rival twice, both times on the road. Saturday against the Tide in T-town, and in 2008 when he took his second-ranked Big Orange to play No. 1, undefeated Memphis in the Bluff City. He won both those games. And he will head into this year’s NCAA Tournament as the favorite to win the six games needed to bring a national BASKETBALL championship to the Loveliest Village on the Plains.
Like any school that wins it all, Pearl will need more than his considerable coaching chops to prevail. Every team that wins a natty does. A favorable draw. No injuries or illnesses. Good and fair officiating. No uncharacteristically bad player performances, such as a leading scorer totalling four points and fouling out with six minutes to go.
But this Auburn team is not only loaded with talent, beginning with Player of the Year candidate Johni Broome, but it’s blessed with nine seniors and 10 players who average 10 or more minutes a game. AU has a preposterous 14 Quad 1 wins, nearly twice more than any other school.
There’s more depth and talent on the Tigers than any team in America. And it’s guaranteed that their coach will have them arrive at March Madness with a chip on their shoulder, eager to atone for last year’s embarrassing first-round exit against Yale.
So when the Tigers host Arkansas tonight at 9 p.m. on ESPN inside the on-campus arena the fans affectionately call The Jungle, they’ll try to avoid the same letdown that bit Pearl’s 2008 UT team after beating Memphis. That squad lost to Vanderbilt in Nashville a few nights later. This AU squad could suffer the same fate against the Hogs and first-year coach John Calipari, who coached that Memphis team in 2008.
But as Broome was meeting with the media after the win over Alabama on Saturday, he brought up tonight’s Arkansas game, and how the Tigers were already preparing to avoid a letdown. Whether they do or not, discussing it a few minutes after the biggest win of the season is good coaching, Hall of Fame worthy coaching.
And should it happen, should Pearl one day reach the Hall of Fame on the strength of his program building and Xs and Os, he’ll surely be the first former college mascot to be so honored.
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(Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@mccallie.org