- Jeff Lebo was fired at end of 2009-10 season.
- After 2009-10: Auburn Basketball Memories
- After 2009-10: Auburn Basketball Analysis (Auburn has only won 27 conference games since this post was written)
- During 2010-11 season: Is Auburn Basketball Cursed? (The Barbee era was over before it barely began)
- After 2011-12 season: Critical Condition (Auburn now has only three winning conference records in TWENTY FIVE YEARS)
- After 2011-12 season: Auburn Basketball is at a dead end
- After 2012-13 season: "I did not post one thing on basketball this year. Nothing has changed since the post I wrote last year titled "Auburn Basketball is at a dead end". In fact things only got worse. My gosh we lost our last 10 games in a row and 16 out of 17 games to end the season. Coach Barbee even gave up during that span. He completely lost his fire, never got off the bench and just doled out platitudes after games. Basketball is a complete and full blown disaster. It is dead and it is the Auburn administration's fault for letting it die on the table over the last 20 years... There just seems to be no hope for Auburn basketball."
That brings us to the end of the 2015-16 season. I will start out saying the same thing I wrote last year:
"Nobody was more excited about Coach Bruce Pearl coming to Auburn than I was... However I was pretty disappointed watching another season completely unravel. I certainly knew he would not do it overnight but I expected more than a 4-14 (5-13 this season) conference record. That is only one (or two) more win(s) than Tony Barbee's "worst season ever" in 2012-13. Barbee went 3-15 in conference that year.
I know Auburn did not have a lot of talent for Pearl to work with but I am sorry they had enough talent with a good coach to do better than 4-14 (or 5-13). It has been extremely difficult to watch. I have heard a lot about this team fighting and not quitting but you can say that about Jeff Lebo's teams. The only thing that matters is wins and losses and again 4-14 (and 5-13) just does not cut it. This team has as much or more talent than many teams Auburn has had over the last 20 years that had better conference records with worse coaches."
I know the team had some serious problems with injuries and defections so maybe some of those comments are unfair. However the facts are sobering. Pearl became the first coach in Auburn basketball history to lose 20 games in back-to-back seasons and set another infamous record of being the first Auburn basketball team to have SEVENTEEN DOUBLE-DIGIT LOSSES. Auburn now has SEVEN losing seasons in a row and again only three winning conference records in TWENTY FIVE YEARS. I mean COME ON!!!
I then wrote after last season that I thought Auburn needed to finish with a winning conference record or at least go 8-8 this season. I thought another losing conference record would hurt Pearl's sales pitch and make it more difficult to convince recruits that Auburn is turning it around. I thought the home attendance would drop as well. Well here we are and we went 5-13. The Tigers were only one game better and there was no great tournament run this season. In fact Auburn was flat-out embarrassed in the first round by a bad Tennessee team 97-59. At one point the Vols led 74-37?!? That is just completely unacceptable.
Will it make it more difficult to recruit? Or can it get any harder to recruit to Auburn for basketball? Probably not. I think the attendance will drop without winning. Nobody wants to watch teams this bad. I will say that once again like last season there was one lone bright spot during the season. Last season it was the tournament run and this season it was consecutive wins over Kentucky and Bama at home. Those were huge wins and if the bottom had not completely fallen out of the season they would be a lot bigger. I definitely understand you cannot take any win over Kentucky in basketball for granted. It just does not happen much. Also it was very important for Pearl to get a win over Bama this season.
The major reason for the season going down the tubes was the suspension and then the departure of leading scorer Kareem Canty after those big wins. Everyone wants to use that as an excuse but a player misbehaving is still on the coach. Senior Cinmeon Bowers also had to be disciplined during the season. Can we not find a decent player without all the drama? I do not understand why so many of these players cannot stay out of trouble. You are playing big-time college basketball and you have a good thing going. Why can't you just PLAY THE GAME??? Every year it seems something like this happens. I keep reading that this season is just a blip on the radar? What??? It is par for the course in Auburn basketball.
Where does that leave this program? I have used terms like: "cursed", "critical condition", "dead end", "disaster", etc... I think at this point I will just simply say Auburn basketball is BROKEN. I still think Bruce Pearl is a great coach. He just has too long a track record of success. I think these two seasons reflect more on this broken program than on Pearl. Now I think he could have done some things better but it is mostly on Auburn. At this point I do not think he is going to be able to fix it. We might get one decent season out of him but I have no doubt he is just waiting for a spot to open at any decent basketball school. I do not blame him. As I have written before, the Auburn job appears to be a career-killing black hole for coaches. The longer Pearl stays, the longer he will be stained by the program.
On top of all this as I wrote last season, I am not sure when or if Auburn will ever make it back to the NCAA Tournament. Things have changed so much since Auburn last made it to the Big Dance in 2003. At that time, a winning conference record pretty much guaranteed an NCAA Tournament berth. Auburn got in with an 8-8 record in 2003 (and 9-7 in 2000). Nowadays an SEC team can go 12-4 in conference and not make it. That does not bode well for Auburn. You have to get some big wins against out-of-conference foes in addition to doing well in your conference. It all paints a pretty bleak picture. People can debate some of the subjective opinions I have written here but the actual events and records cannot be debated. The program is broken.
I know Auburn did not have a lot of talent for Pearl to work with but I am sorry they had enough talent with a good coach to do better than 4-14 (or 5-13). It has been extremely difficult to watch. I have heard a lot about this team fighting and not quitting but you can say that about Jeff Lebo's teams. The only thing that matters is wins and losses and again 4-14 (and 5-13) just does not cut it. This team has as much or more talent than many teams Auburn has had over the last 20 years that had better conference records with worse coaches."
I know the team had some serious problems with injuries and defections so maybe some of those comments are unfair. However the facts are sobering. Pearl became the first coach in Auburn basketball history to lose 20 games in back-to-back seasons and set another infamous record of being the first Auburn basketball team to have SEVENTEEN DOUBLE-DIGIT LOSSES. Auburn now has SEVEN losing seasons in a row and again only three winning conference records in TWENTY FIVE YEARS. I mean COME ON!!!
I then wrote after last season that I thought Auburn needed to finish with a winning conference record or at least go 8-8 this season. I thought another losing conference record would hurt Pearl's sales pitch and make it more difficult to convince recruits that Auburn is turning it around. I thought the home attendance would drop as well. Well here we are and we went 5-13. The Tigers were only one game better and there was no great tournament run this season. In fact Auburn was flat-out embarrassed in the first round by a bad Tennessee team 97-59. At one point the Vols led 74-37?!? That is just completely unacceptable.
Will it make it more difficult to recruit? Or can it get any harder to recruit to Auburn for basketball? Probably not. I think the attendance will drop without winning. Nobody wants to watch teams this bad. I will say that once again like last season there was one lone bright spot during the season. Last season it was the tournament run and this season it was consecutive wins over Kentucky and Bama at home. Those were huge wins and if the bottom had not completely fallen out of the season they would be a lot bigger. I definitely understand you cannot take any win over Kentucky in basketball for granted. It just does not happen much. Also it was very important for Pearl to get a win over Bama this season.
The major reason for the season going down the tubes was the suspension and then the departure of leading scorer Kareem Canty after those big wins. Everyone wants to use that as an excuse but a player misbehaving is still on the coach. Senior Cinmeon Bowers also had to be disciplined during the season. Can we not find a decent player without all the drama? I do not understand why so many of these players cannot stay out of trouble. You are playing big-time college basketball and you have a good thing going. Why can't you just PLAY THE GAME??? Every year it seems something like this happens. I keep reading that this season is just a blip on the radar? What??? It is par for the course in Auburn basketball.
Where does that leave this program? I have used terms like: "cursed", "critical condition", "dead end", "disaster", etc... I think at this point I will just simply say Auburn basketball is BROKEN. I still think Bruce Pearl is a great coach. He just has too long a track record of success. I think these two seasons reflect more on this broken program than on Pearl. Now I think he could have done some things better but it is mostly on Auburn. At this point I do not think he is going to be able to fix it. We might get one decent season out of him but I have no doubt he is just waiting for a spot to open at any decent basketball school. I do not blame him. As I have written before, the Auburn job appears to be a career-killing black hole for coaches. The longer Pearl stays, the longer he will be stained by the program.
On top of all this as I wrote last season, I am not sure when or if Auburn will ever make it back to the NCAA Tournament. Things have changed so much since Auburn last made it to the Big Dance in 2003. At that time, a winning conference record pretty much guaranteed an NCAA Tournament berth. Auburn got in with an 8-8 record in 2003 (and 9-7 in 2000). Nowadays an SEC team can go 12-4 in conference and not make it. That does not bode well for Auburn. You have to get some big wins against out-of-conference foes in addition to doing well in your conference. It all paints a pretty bleak picture. People can debate some of the subjective opinions I have written here but the actual events and records cannot be debated. The program is broken.
I wish I knew a solution. I wish anybody knew a solution and they could do something about it. The only thing I can think of is to just try only taking kids from Auburn's base recruiting region. Just take the best available and grow that team to seniors. They will not be world beaters and probably won't finish near the top of the standings but they might could finish 8-8 and doing it with more of a homegrown team might bring the fans out. Recruit the best available from as close to Auburn as you can get. Get kids that have grown up around the SEC. It certainly cannot hurt, things pretty much cannot get any worse.
I base this on Auburn's greatest team, the 1999 team. Every starter on that team except Mamadou who was a special exception was from Alabama or Georgia. Chris Porter, Doc Robinson and Bryant Smith were all from Alabama. Scotty Pohlman was from Georgia. I know that is a once in a lifetime team but I think that is one of the reasons that team came together. I think it is also true about many of Bama's special basketball teams as well. These coaches continue to bring in these mercenaries who have no attachment to this area of the country and have proven they will quit and leave as soon as they do not get their way or something bad happens, i.e. Kareem Canty.
I am not sure how to end this. I get the feeling I will be writing the same things next year again. As evidenced by the list above and this post I have already written them many times already. I do not have any illusions about championships in basketball but Auburn should have more than three winning conference records in TWENTY -FIVE YEARS. Auburn should be better than this. The buck ultimately stops with the administration. It is not all this administration's fault basketball is in this state but they have done their part like the ones before them. Auburn basketball is broken. Can anyone fix it?
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