There was a time in the late 2010s, just as Tennessee Basketball hit its stride under Rick Barnes, when Vol fans still missed Bruce Pearl, and with good reason. Pearl won six straight over the Vols at one point, costing them the outright regular season title in 2018, a share of the regular season title in 2019 and the SEC Tournament title in 2019.
Had there been an NCAA Tournament in 2020, a loss to Auburn at the end of the regular season might have been what kept the Vols out of it. Simply put, he was a thorn in UT’s side and made fans feel the sting of firing him back in 2011 every time he lined up opposite them.
That’s no longer the case.
In recent years, the Vols have evened things up with Auburn, culminating with UT beating the SEC regular season champion Tigers Saturday in the SEC Tournament semifinals. That alone is enough for them to be happy with Rick Barnes over Pearl, but Pearl’s behavior only accentuates it.
We all know Pearl has a colorful personality, and that’s exactly what the Vols needed to promote their program when they hired him in 2005. Now, for a man in his 60s, it honestly looks pathetic, and how he spoke to the media over the weekend makes that clear.
It started with Auburn’s close win over the Ole Miss Rebels on Friday. Bruce Pearl, in an SEC Network postgame interview, used an expletive while touting the way his guards played. His exact quote was, “My guards aren’t p****es.” You can click here if you want to hear it explicitly.
I’m not some puritan. Cursing isn’t an issue for me, and I don’t believe in decorum. However, Pearl very clearly and calculatingly said it right there to get social media praise as some kind of rebel. Again, he’s too old to do stuff like that, and it actually looked somewhat pathetic.
What happened Saturday was even worse.
After Auburn’s loss to Tennessee, Pearl went off on a reporter for asking a perfectly legitimate question. The question was whether or not panic was setting in for Auburn, which had lost three of four. Pearl gave a very sarcastic response, naming the three teams they lost to (all top 25 teams), and implied it was a dumb question.
Sorry, but this is a ridiculous way to respond. Auburn spent much of the year No. 1 in the nation. Yes, it lost to three top 10 teams, but only one was on the road, and that was to the worst of the three, the Texas A&M Aggies. They lost at home to the Alabama Crimson Tide and on a neutral court to the Tennessee Vols.
Beyond those losses, though, they also struggled to put away Ole Miss on a neutral court Friday, an Ole Miss team that had a three-point win over the Arkansas Razorbacks just the day before while Auburn was resting. The Tigers had to fight until the end to get that victory, only winning by five. That’s their only win the past two weeks.
Why wouldn’t there be a question about panic with that four-game stretch? Auburn is clearly showing a level of regression right now, and that’s despite the fact that their best player, SEC Player of the Year Johni Broome, is finally healthy. Are they tired? Have teams figured them out? What’s wrong with wondering?
Truth is, nothing is wrong in Pearl’s eyes, but he loves the viral moments. As a result, he knew it’d be great for the cameras to lash out at a reporter asking such a legitimate question, attempting to have his Nick Saban moment (go back and look at Saban press conferences when he went off on reporters).
When Pearl painted his chest for a Lady Vols game or got thrown out of a high school basketball game in his early years with the Vols, it made perfect sense. He was a born cheerleader and doing his best to promote a program that had just moved on from Buzz Peterson and had, well, no buzz. Also, he didn’t have the profile he has now.
However, he’s in his 11th year with Auburn and has been consistently churning out top programs. As an established coach, even at a school like Auburn, it’s no longer necessary, and he’s a lot older. He’s still doing these things, though, and it looks more like a senior citizen having a mid-life crisis than a cheerleader. The SEC Tournament proved why the Vols shouldn’t miss him.
