'...if we don't win the national championship, we'll be disappointed...': Bruce Pearl, top-seed Auburn set for NCAA Tournament run

AUBURN — Bruce Pearl spoke plainly on Sunday after finding out Auburn was the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.

“It allows us to be able to say that our goal is to win the national championship. It allows us to say that if we don’t win the national championship, we’ll be disappointed as a number one seed,” Pearl said.

The Tigers will start their NCAA Tournament journey in Lexington, Kentucky atop the South Regional. With a win against Alabama State or Saint Francis on Thursday, Auburn would then face either 8-seed Louisville or 9-seed Creighton on Saturday.

Auburn will play Alabama State/Saint Francis at 1:50 pm CT on Thursday. The game will be on CBS.

AUBURN EARNS NO. 1 OVERALL SEED AFTER HISTORIC SEASON

Auburn has made only four Sweet 16s, two Elite Eights and one Final Four.

Of Auburn’s 33 total games played this season, 24 have come against teams in this year’s NCAA Tournament. That’s a remarkable number. Auburn, of course, has played the other three No. 1 seeds in Duke, Houston and Florida, and the top two No. 2 seeds in Tennessee and Alabama. Of the top 14 overall seeds as selected by the selection committee, Auburn played nine. Of the top 20, Auburn played half.

KenPom rated Auburn’s overall SOS No. 2 nationally. And, Auburn finished the season playing the second-toughest collection of offenses (on average) and second-toughest collection of defenses (on average) throughout the season. Through it all, Auburn finished with a nation-leading 16 Quad 1 wins.

“It’s been a long time since we played Houston and Duke. Which teams have gotten better? We’ll find out. Florida right now, to me, looks like they’re playing the best basketball of anybody in the country,” Pearl said.

There are interesting storylines in Auburn’s side of the bracket.

Texas A&M is the 4-seed and we know what kind of problems Buzz Williams and the Aggies have caused for Pearl and Auburn over the years. Michigan is the 5-seed, so maybe a reunion with Tre Donaldson? Yale is the 13-seed and would need to get past Texas A&M first. But, if they do, I’m sure Auburn would love another crack at the Ivy League champs. Iowa State is the 3-seed, so a matchup there would be a Maui rematch. Then Ole Miss is the 6-seed. If they played, it would be the fourth time this season.

But first things first, especially after last year’s disastrous first-round loss to Yale.

“We’re going to take it one game at a time. These are the highest goals I think I’ve ever had heading into the NCAA Tournament. I’m more of a 12-seed guy my whole career than I am a 1-seed.”

Auburn will practice the next two days before leaving town on Tuesday afternoon. Pearl said his team is “100 percent” in terms of overall health at the moment.

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Alabama State and St. Francis will play on Tuesday. It will be a quick prep for Auburn with the game being on Thursday.

“Well, what we’ll do is we’ll have two different groups of my coaching staff working on each team. So I got some of my staff working Alabama State, like that’s gonna be the team. I got some other guys on my staff working on St. Francis because that’s going to be the team we’re playing against. And you know, that’s why right now I’ll probably spend my first day or two taking a look at Creighton and Louisville and then once we know who we’re playing, it will have to be a quick study Tuesday night, Wednesday, to be able to get ready to go at either St. Francis or Alabama State.”

Pearl said a few words on Louisville and Creighton.

“…of course Creighton and Louisville. Pat Kelsey is the coach at Louisville. He may win a national coach of the year award. Louisville finished at the bottom a year ago, picked to finish near the bottom this year and what an incredible turnaround. Pat Kelsey, one of the best young coaches in our game and of course Greg McDermott has been at Creighton for a long time. He is an offensive guru and they run great stuff, really hard to guard stuff. Tremendous size, Creighton does, on their front line. To advance past that 8/9 matchup, the 8/9s are always teams that are probably as good as the teams you’ll see if you advance, if we advance to Atlanta.”

Pearl was asked if he was surprised Louisville fell to an 8-seed, and thoughts on potentially playing them in their home state of Kentucky.

“Yeah, I, I had most of the stuff we had seen, had them at the six or seven line. And so somehow they got bumped down to eight. And, you know, we have to play great teams no matter where we have to play them. A couple years ago, Houston had to play us when we were an eight or nine seed in Birmingham. Birmingham was a couple hours away, obviously, but Auburn travels. We’re gonna travel, and so we’re gonna have a lot of people up in Lexington. If Louisville advances, they’ll have a lot of people there. If Creighton advances, they’re gonna have a great crowd there. So, I’m not going to get into that too much.”

After Saturday’s loss, Pearl mentioned trying to alter the offense some to not have to run through Johni Broome so predominantly moving forward. He expounded more on that Sunday night.

“One of the things I would like to see us try to do better is I would like to see us run the floor more. I’d like to see us get a little bit, be a little better in our transition offense. And that would be something that I think that, that would be something that I would look to try to see… can we create some offense of our defense which leads to some transition. But, can we run after makes and put a little bit more pressure on the transition defense? I’d like to try to do that a little bit more and that I think would help improve our offense.”