Auburn, Steven Pearl Deserve A Lot of Credit for Winning NIT Championship

Auburn basketball deserved a lot of criticism this season – and rightfully so.

From the late offseason departure of head coach Bruce Pearl to its collapse in the SEC and missing the NCAA Tournament, it was a disaster of an inaugural year for Steven Pearl, but the Tigers deserve credit for winning the NIT on Sunday night and showing some fight in the process.

Winning a postseason tournament is not easy for a power conference team that had hopes of playing in March Madness. In fact, it’s much easier to roll over and quit its first NIT game than muster the ability to go on a run and Auburn was close to throwing in the towel.

“I think it says a lot,” Kevin Overton said after the Tigers beat Tulsa 92-86 in overtime. “I think we all had that moment of doubt in the year. Truthfully, we didn't really want to play. Like you said, we could have packed it up. But we came together.”

“Once we started playing it became, okay, it's basketball at the end of the day and we're still competitors. Let's go win the game. Obviously, we didn't want to be where we were, but we are the ones that got in that situation, so let's just go make the best of it.”

Auburn beat South Alabama, Seattle, Nevada, Illinois State, and Tulsa to capture its title. Against the Golden Hurricane, it led by as many as 21 points before being outscored by 17 points in the second half and needing a miraculous rally in the final ten seconds to force overtime.

“This game was kind of a microcosm of our season,” Steven Pearl said.

“Lesser-character young men would have folded it up and, you know, just gotten to the offseason” he added about his team’s mentality in the tournament. “This group didn't. They used this as an opportunity to compete. They used this as an opportunity to gain some positive moment going into an offseason, an important offseason for all of us.”

Momentum going into the offseason doesn’t nearly mean as much in college basketball as it did a handful of years ago considering the roster reset every team goes through with the transfer portal, but it should give a boost in confidence to Pearl, who had questions surrounding him if he was cut out for the job.

“I feel like the guys that we want to have return are obviously in a better place mentally. You know, seeing what it's capable of looking like,” he continued.

“I think this run and this decision to play in this tournament, there was a lot of that factored into my decision, and you know, it could have blown up in your face. But to our guys' credit, to our staff's credit…They have poured into our guys, loved on our guys and our guys have received that really well.”

“I think they came out here and they made me proud, they made our staff proud, they made our university proud and I think they showed the nation what this team is built on, and for that, that's something we can build on moving forward.”