Bruce Pearl addresses Auburn plane incident, fallout for players involved

On Friday, Auburn‘s plane had to turn around and land after Jahki Howard and Ja’Heim Hudson reportedly got into an altercation on the way to Houston, Texas. During an appearance on The Field of 68 on Monday, Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl addressed the incident.

“I’m limited in what I want to say, but it was an unfortunate situation,” Pearl said. “We are dealing with it head on and it’s sort of an ongoing process.

“We’re going to handle the right way. And in spite of a rough start to our trip, we played in a basketball game in November that felt like it was March. We had a great, great game at Houston.”

Per Jeff Goodman, Auburn was about 45 minutes into its trip when it was forced to turn the flight around. Howard and Hudson ultimately didn’t join Auburn on the second flight. The team didn’t begin its second flight until 9:30 p.m. CT.

Luckily for Auburn, the team was able to catch up on rest as they didn’t tip off against Houston until 8:30 p.m. CT the following night. If the incident weighed heavy on any of the Tigers, they didn’t show it.

Auburn put on a stunning performance, securing a 74-69 victory over No. 4 Houston. In the win, Tahaad Pettiford tallied a team-high 21 points. Not to be outdone, Johni Broome added 20 points, nine rebounds and five blocks to the Tigers’ winning effort.

Pearl explained how the unexpected issue affected his team.

“It made for a long day,” Pearl said. “We missed a community service opportunity that we felt badly about. Fortunately, didn’t play until late last night. It was way past my bedtime when we tipped. But, we’ve had situations where we’ve had flight delays and gotten in late. Last night, we got back at 3 o’clock in the morning.

“As coaches and teachers and dealing with young people, we deal with lots of things on a daily basis, and that’s our job. I mean, that’s our job. So, a lot of what we do in coaching is stuff that is off the floor.”

While Pearl minimized the effect of the altercation in the interview, he admitted that he had to make a few changes to adjust for Howard and Hudson’s absences.

“On Saturday, the day of the shoot around, I had to teach Miles Kelly. He had to go from playing all two to playing two and three. Chris Moore had to go from playing four, to playing a little bit of three. We had to move some pieces around.”

Bruce Pearl did not confirm whether or not Howard and Hudson will be available for Auburn’s matchup against Kent State on Wednesday.