Bruce Pearl explains Auburn’s daunting planning decisions

“With two teams ranked in the top 10 in the preseason, we have the potential to play in Atlanta in a rematch at USC and Indiana in a rematch,” Pearl said in September 2023. “The opportunity to play against Baylor to open the season in South Dakota, it’s an opportunity. It’s a great trip for our fans. I want our fans to get out there in the early winter and late fall and do a little pheasant hunting and experience beautiful South Dakota. It’s beautiful out there.” .”

Of the 13 non-conference teams the Tigers played, only four finished the previous season with a loss. Many made it to the NCAA Tournament, and two of them were seeded to finish the year.

But headline-grabbing matchups with a ranked Baylor team in South Dakota, Bronny James and USC, among others, failed to live up to the billing. Instead, Auburn’s doomed roster was filled with quality matchups at best, but no dynamo matchups with some of the nation’s best.

That’s partly why Auburn’s nonconference slate for the 2024-25 season looks very, very different.

It’s been well-documented that Auburn’s offseason for the Tigers has set teams coming off impressive seasons, of course, but teams have consistently been in this camp.

“If we were in the top 10 in the last seven years, we have to act like it at some point whether we are or not,” Pearl said on Wednesday. “And one of the ways to act like that is to try to build a program there. I don’t know if we can recruit like a top 10 program. I don’t know if we can finish as a top 10 program. But I can build a program like that because I can control it. That’s what we did.”

Auburn doesn’t have a preseason ranking to weigh in on its nongame schedule, but there’s almost no need for it.

After opening the year against Vermont, the Tigers travel to Texas three days later to play a Houston team that was the No. 1 seed in last season’s NCAA Tournament. They will head to Maui in three games; Their position in the eight-team Maui Invitational field here guarantees them a matchup with Iowa State, the No. 2 seed in last year’s tournament, and a win would put them against Dayton or North. Carolina

Later? Auburn flies home to prepare for its trip to Duke. In just under two weeks, the Tigers will play a semi-neutral site game against Purdue in Birmingham.

“We’re just trying to act like we belong,” Pearl said.

However, looking at the rankings shows how intense this program is.

College basketball analysis site T-Rank, which has been updating its list since last season, shows that six of the 11 teams officially named by Auburn are in the top 100. Four of those six are ranked in the top 10, while Houston, Purdue and Iowa State rank No. 2, No. 3 and No. 5, respectively, in terms of the metric.

The situation becomes even more difficult when we factor in other teams Auburn could face on Maui. On the other side of Auburn, UNC and Dayton are ranked 9th and 47th. If the Tigers play the highest-rated teams possible on the trip, they will face the Cyclones, Tar Heels and UConn, the top-seeded team winning its second straight national title.