Bruce Pearl, Jabari Smith, and Walker Kessler receive SEC Men's Basketball Postseason Awards
Bruce Pearl, Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler were all recipients of major SEC awards on Tuesday morning. Pearl was honored as SEC Coach of the Year, Smith earned SEC Freshman of the Year, and Kessler earned SEC Defensive Player of the Year.
Such a dominant regular season for Bruce Pearl's Tigers, and it ends with a variety of accolades.
Pearl became the first men's basketball or football coach in conference history to lead two SEC schools to a No. 1 national ranking (Tennessee in 2008 and Auburn in 2022), according to a press release from Auburn Athletics. Auburn's 15 conference regular-season wins were a program-record.
Pearl also guided the Tigers to an outright SEC regular-season championship title for the first time since 1999, a 19-game win streak, the program's third all-time No. 1 SEC Tournament seed, an undefeated 16-0 season on their home court and their fourth 25+ win season in the last five years. Coach Pearl is the first Auburn men's basketball coach to win the award since Cliff Ellis (1999). Pearl is currently on the Naismith Men's College Coach of the Year Watch List.
Jabari Smith's numbers are certainly worthy of SEC Freshman of the Year. Smith averaged 17.1 points per game, while shooting 43.6 percent from behind the 3-point arc this season. He guided the Tigers' offense when they struggled, and lead the team to their first outright SEC Regular Season title for the first time since 1999.
North Carolina transfer Walker Kessler dominated the SEC. While Jabari Smith has been Auburn's most talented player, Kessler has arguably been Auburn's most valuable player. He averaged 11.5 points and 8.2 rebounds per contest, while leading both Division I and the SEC in blocked shots, averaging 4.5 a game. He also is fourth on the team in steals (33).
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