Bruce Pearl says Tennessee crowd did not impact Auburn 'at all'

Thomson-Boling Arena is always one of the rowdiest environments in college hoops, especially when Tennessee is rolling, which they have been for most of this season. Auburn felt the frenzy of 20,000+ howling for 40 straight minutes on Saturday as both teams battled on the defensive end. The Tigers and Vols both boast excellent defenses, but struggled to score for two top-25 teams with a combined 89 points.

Could that crazy crowd have had something to do with the poor shooting night, especially from Auburn? According to Bruce Pearl, no way.

“Yeah, you know, I don’t I don’t think we were affected at all by the environment,” said Pearl, adding: “Which was great. We weren’t affected by the environment at all.”

Auburn fans left the game with a bitter taste in their mouths after a controversial final play of the game, where Auburn guard Wendell Green launched a potential game-tying three with just seconds on the clock and made contact with a Volunteer player who stepped near Green’s landing space as he released the ball. However, despite his attempts to draw the foul by selling the contact, the officials swallowed their whistles.

Afterwards, though, Bruce Pearl surprisingly didn’t express any frustration over the no-call. Instead, he shouldered the blame himself and said that the team needs to work on getting better looks late in the game.

“At the end of the game, very disappointed. But, I’ve got to do a better job of getting our guys…In practice, I’ve just got to work on it even more. We work on a lot of things and I’ve just got to work on some end game offense, so I get my team better shots. That’s what I’m responsible for,” Pearl said.

There are many coaches — perhaps the vast majority — who absolutely would have gotten snippy in the postgame presser over that last no-call and made the entire game about that one moment. Not Pearl, though. Good on him.