NIT for Auburn basketball? It deserves the NCAA Tournament, Steven Pearl says

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The NIT? For Auburn basketball?

Technically, it could still happen, especially with the Tigers making a second-round SEC Tournament exit Thursday, March 12, but it hasn’t been a topic of discussion in the confines of Neville Arena.

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Head coach Steven Pearl said after the Tigers’ 72-62 loss to five-seed Tennessee that his program hasn’t discussed its alternate postseason options should it not make the March Madness field, because “we deserve to be in the (NCAA) tournament,” he said.

Then Pearl took a healthy pause: “I’ll just go on a rant then.”

“First off,” Pearl said, “What people have to understand is it’s my job to fight for my team. It’s my job to be my team’s advocate. It’s my job to speak about all the things that this group’s done.”

Fight on, Pearl did.

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“Some of the biggest things that we’re told to do in scheduling, especially during football season, is to get some of these primetime matchups for TV ratings, to compete with football,” Pearl continued. “That’s why we play teams like Houston and Purdue and Arizona. We go to the Players Era. We do all those things.”

In all, Auburn played 11 ranked opponents during the regular season, which included games against then-No. 1 Houston and then-No. 2 Arizona. Based on NET rating, which is heavily factored into the selection committee’s decisions, Auburn faced a nation-leading Quad 1 foes, though it went 4-12 in those games.

“We scheduled a really hard out-of-conference schedule,” Pearl said. “We had some really quality wins in that streak. This tournament is a team of who you can beat. If we’re going to look at six teams on the bubble right now — Texas, SMU, VCU, Miami Ohio, Missouri, New Mexico.

“We have more top-25 NET wins than everyone in that group but Missouri. We have more top-50 wins than everyone in that group. We have two top-25 road neutral wins, more than everyone else on the bubble. We have more wins over the projected field than anyone else on the…

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Publish date : 2026-03-12 23:30:00

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