Bruce Pearl, Nate Oats set for biggest game in rivalry: 'For all the bragging rights'

“Eleven years ago when I got to Auburn, this game mattered around the state. On Saturday, it matters around the world.”

Bruce Pearl could not have summed it up better as his No. 1-ranked Auburn Tigers get set to take on No. 2 Alabama at 4 p.m. ET on Saturday in Tuscaloosa.

The implications are endless in basketball’s Iron Bowl, which will be the first 1 vs. 2 meeting not only between these two programs, but in the history of the SEC Conference. This is the type of game that can decide who ends up being the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. It’s a game that will allow the winner to find separation at the top of the SEC regular-season title race, with both teams entering at 10-1 in the league. And let’s not forget that only 157 miles separate the two bitter rivals, with this game having bragging rights, recruiting implications and much more.

Coleman Coliseum is going to be rocking with multiple All-Americans on display between Auburn’s National Player of the Year candidate, Johni Broome, and Alabama’s superstar point guard, Mark Sears. And for a viewer, this is basketball nirvana. These two teams are No. 1 and 2 in KenPom offensive efficiency.

“I think this basketball game may be the best game in all of college basketball for the entire year,” Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats told FOX Sports. “Now, depending on what happens in this game, then the next three weeks, we close the regular season with a rematch at Auburn on March 8. We’ll see how everything shakes out. But really, it’s 1 vs. 2, but depending on what you look at, it can be argued as 1 vs. 1 since we’re at the top of the coaches poll.

“Look, Auburn’s better in the analytics sites than us. And we know it. They’ve only got two losses, and one of them just came more recently than us. So, I don’t disagree with the AP Poll at all, but the good thing is it’s not like old school football where you get to let the voters decide. We actually get to decide on the court on Saturday.”

For these two teams to be representing the SEC in this 1 vs. 2 showdown is very fitting. Auburn and Alabama have accounted for six of the last eight championships between the conference tournament and regular season.

“The championships in the SEC are running through the state of Alabama,” said Pearl, who joined FOX Sports by phone for an exclusive interview from Auburn’s team bus on Friday afternoon. “I think we both helped each other elevate one another’s program to get to this point. Nate Oats is one of the best coaches in college basketball, plain and simple. I think when you’re recruiting and recruits know that Alabama is our rival, and Alabama’s recruits know that Auburn is their rival, it elevates us. To some extent, Kentucky and Tennessee used to benefit from that. Duke and Carolina obviously do. Michigan and Michigan State do too.

“Look at the math: we’ve won four SEC championships in the last seven years. That’s what this rivalry has become. It has risen to a level that’s been as good as any showdown in the sport in recent years.”

FOX Sports caught up with both head coaches ahead of Saturday’s heavyweight clash.

Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl:

How special is it to be on this stage on Saturday?

“This is what every coach and every player dreams about. The opportunity to play against the best teams on the biggest stage with championship implications on the line. It’s why you work so hard all year long, to prepare and put yourself to get an opportunity like this.”

You were not included in the AP preseason top 10. Right now, your team is 22-2 on the season and stayed at No. 1, even after a loss last weekend to Florida. When did you know this team could be extraordinary?

“Honestly, after we played Houston. And I know that was just the second game of the year, but to go down there and play a great team and a great coach, to handle that big moment, that elevated my expectations for this year’s team. And of course, we go to Maui and win the tournament, we’re competitive at Duke, and then we go two months without losing a game. In my mind, we’ve lost two games [Duke and Florida] to a pair of potential Final Four teams, and we’re playing another one on Saturday.”

I don’t ever want to say losing is a good thing, but it’s interesting that you go from last Saturday to this one where you fell to Florida, and now you’ve got Alabama. What did you take from the loss to the Gators that you have to adjust to beat the Crimson Tide?

“Well, I don’t think losing to Florida … you know, you get the ‘well, at least we lost the game at this time of the year.’ Like, what, you think this is the only game we’re going to lose?! I’m glad we got that one out of the way. … That’s this league. I think Florida played great, they made shots, they were more active than we were, and we looked a step slow. Well, get this: Alabama is even faster than them. They play at the No. 1 tempo of any high-major. This is the leading-scoring team in college basketball in Alabama against the No. 1 efficiency team in Auburn. And so both teams are really good offensively. We can play fast, but we don’t want to play crazy fast.”

With that being said, how much have you preached to your team that defense will be the difference in this game?

“Completely. Defense and rebounding are going to be the total difference. Try as we might, Florida put 90 on us. Alabama has scored 100 points seven times this year, so yeah, we’ve got to be on our game. We have to make plays on the defensive end.”

To that end, when you’re watching Alabama, what is it that allows them to be the nation’s highest scoring offense? What concerns you the most with having to guard them?

“They’ve got four or five concepts that are very hard to guard given their personnel and the way they execute them. So it’s almost like, ‘well, we can do this, but then they’ll take that or if you take something else away, they’ll just counter it.’ That’s the mark of a well-put-together offense. You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”

Who is your tone-setter on the defensive end?

“I think Dylan Cardwell is the best defensive player in college basketball. He doesn’t get talked about a lot, but he can guard 1-5, and he’ll have a huge presence. It will take all five guys being really connected. This is absolutely not an offensive team that you can beat with one or two guys defending. We need all five to be elite on that end of the floor.”

What’s the contrast between your first meeting with Alabama as Auburn’s head coach and this one?

“This is arguably for an SEC championship. This is for a No. 1 overall seed. This is for all of the bragging rights. What more could you ask for? Eleven years ago, it was a fun rivalry for us to talk about in our state. On Saturday, it’s the top story in the sports world. We love everything about it.”

When you check into the hotel tonight, do you get a bad look from someone in Tuscaloosa? Do you sense the rivalry?

“No, no (laughter). I don’t know what that hotel will feel like tonight, but here’s what I do know: this game means more to our players. It means more to our fans. It means more to our student bodies. It’s everything for a lot of people. I just hope that on Saturday, it’s a good game and a clean game.”

Alabama head coach Nate Oats:

First and foremost, I know you have a lot of goals and I know how much you want to win a national championship. But if you could focus on the here and now for a moment, to have a 1 vs. 2 rivalry showdown in Tuscaloosa with the eyes of the nation watching, what does this mean?

“It’s exciting and it’s pretty cool to see the level that basketball has reached in the SEC as a whole. For the league to be as good as it is this year, and for us and Auburn to be tied at the top, with us being in the same state and meeting each other in a big rivalry game, it’s special. When I got here, Auburn had just come off a Final Four appearance and we had some work to do to catch our in-state rival. And it’s kind of been back-and-forth. If you count the SEC regular season and tournament champions, six out of the last eight have been won by the two of us.

“Bruce has obviously done an unbelievable job taking them from where he got them. That program wasn’t very good at all when he took it over, so for him to take it to the level they’re at, making a Final Four in 2019 and having the potential to make another, it’s something. When I took over our program in 2019, it was not nearly as bad off as Auburn was when Bruce took over there. We had some talent, but we still had to build it from where it was. So, for both of us to now be sitting at No. 1 and 2 in the country, playing for a lot at stake – an SEC championship, seeding in the NCAA Tournament and more, it’s incredible. It’s always been a rivalry, but there’s so much more at stake now.”

Since the Jan. 14 home loss to Ole Miss, you’ve reeled off seven straight wins and you’ve scored 85 or more points in all but one game on the streak while posting 100 or more in three games. What has clicked for your team?

“You know what, with the Ole Miss game, I didn’t think we came in prepared for that game. I told our team that we just weren’t ready to play and we didn’t deserve to win. The team that deserved to win that game won that game. Our preparation, our time in the gym and even outside of practice, things weren’t where they needed to be. There were a lot of things that, if we want to be a championship-level team, needed to change. And I think they answered the bell after that.

“Our guys are in the gym a lot more. We deserve to make shots now that we didn’t deserve to make before, when guys weren’t working as hard as they needed to. Ole Miss did play a switching defense and I felt we didn’t attack that very well, but I also didn’t think our guys prepared to do it in practice. So, I think practice habits have gotten better in practice and outside of practice. You know, our defense isn’t where we want it to be, but I do think our defense has improved. If you’re running more off misses, it’s a lot easier for your offense. So, we’ve upped the intensity level in a lot of areas since the Ole Miss game.”

Defensively, who is bringing their lunch pail every day?

“Chris Youngblood, for sure. And then Mohamed Dioubate is tough every night out. He’s got to prepare a little bit better schematics wise. He definitely brings toughness every night. But I would say Youngblood and Grant Nelson. Those two bring it every night. Grant got a little banged up and wasn’t where he needed to be. But honestly, Mark Sears has been good since the LSU game. He’s been practicing significantly harder and he’s playing harder. His only issue right now is turnovers. If he gets the turnovers figured out, he’d be playing the best basketball on both sides of the ball in his college career. So, hopefully we can get that figured out real soon.”

You benched Mark Sears in the second half of the 80-73 win over LSU back on Jan. 25. What transpired after that game?

“We had a meeting to discuss what the issues were and more of it stemmed from the fact that he’s our best player, and we need him to prepare to play well by practicing hard. I mean, there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with all of what’s being the best player on a really good team. You lead the team in minutes, in shot attempts and so much more, and there’s going to be a lot of responsibility that comes with that. And when we’re tied with an LSU team at halftime that we all feel we’re significantly better than, somebody’s got to take some ownership and there have to be some changes made.

“We’re really just trying to motivate guys to give better effort, and we just needed to handle it a little bit better. Nobody wants Mark to play bad. We all want him to play better. We just wanted him to play a little harder and take some more ownership of how the team performs, not just how he performs. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was shooting 0-for-5 in the game. It had more to do with practice habits, effort during the game, and then reaction to not starting the second half. It was a shock to him. You can warn people all you want, but you don’t know how they’re going to respond. In the moment, maybe it wasn’t what we were all looking for, but after the game, I thought he was really good celebrating with his teammates and in the days after, I think he has practiced as hard as he ever has in his career. And as a result, he’s playing a lot better outside of some of the turnover issues. But I think he’s playing the best basketball of his career right now.”

You went 16-15 in the 2019-20 season, your first at the helm. Obviously, the transfer portal wasn’t what it is now and the ability to take over a program and really turn a roster over was not as much of a thing as it is today. But if I told you in April 2020 that less than five years later you’d be No. 2 in the country and hosting the No. 1 team in the nation on a Saturday afternoon, what would you have said?

“Oh man. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do to get there!

“We were one game over .500 that year. Recruiting went really well to get us there, that’s what I would have said. You couldn’t flip a roster quickly back then, but we knew the system we wanted to put in place. We didn’t necessarily have the personnel to do it, but we put in the system anyway. A lot of coaches say they’re going to play fast and play modern basketball with lots of 3s, but only when they get their roster right. Well, four years after they’ve got the job, if they don’t have the roster right, it’s hard to recruit to that until you show that you’re actually doing it. We just put it in and we had guys that were traditional post-up bigs playing out on the perimeter.

“We turned Alex Reese into a different player and he’s now with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Nobody thought that guy was going to play in the NBA. There was some talent on the roster, but it just wasn’t built the way we wanted to play much at all. Now we had Kira Lewis and Jaden Shackleford, and Herb Jones was in a cast the majority of the year. We knew we had to recruit guys to fit it. But it’s just, at that point, it’s impossible to flip a roster that quickly. So, we put it in and we endured some losses. Maybe we’d have had a few more wins if they played a lot more like they did previously. But that’s not how we wanted to play. It’s not what we wanted recruits to see, and it’s not what we wanted our current players doing.

“I think if we’d have gone out there to just won games in Year 1 and that’s it, we would not have had the Year 2 that we had when we won the SEC regular season and tournament championships and reached the Sweet 16. Certain guys wouldn’t have known to play in the system in Year 2 had we done something totally different in Year 1. All of those guys had to learn the system and learn how we play. When you add the right pieces to it, it went a lot better.”

What about Auburn stands out to you the most?

“The amount of guys that can make tough shots. I mean, we listed off all the different players’ high scoring performances this season, and you have multiple guys on that team that have scored in the mid to high 20s, if not 30s at times. Shoot, just last game, Chaney Johnson came in off the bench and had 20 points. Denver Jones scored 21. It wasn’t Johni Broome or Chad Baker-Mazara. It was others. They have so many guys who can do that in any given game.

“Everybody’s going to talk about Johni Broome and that he deserves to win national player of the year, and rightly so. He deserves the love, but they’ve got multiple guys that can go for 20 in any game this year. You can’t just lock into stopping one or two players. There are so many different guys that can score it, and if you double Broome, he can pass it at a high level. Then, all of a sudden, you’re dealing with 40% 3-point shooters. And they also turn you over, they score off turnovers and they get offensive boards. So, their first-shot offense is really good, but they’re also scoring off turnovers and in second-chance points. That’s why their efficiency numbers are so high. So, we’ve got to eliminate the points off turnovers and second-chance points as much as possible.”

What do you want your atmosphere to be on Saturday night?

“This is a rivalry game. The atmosphere is always good when we play them, even when we weren’t good in my first year and we beat a top-five Auburn team. I want it to be a high-basketball IQ crowd, knowing when to cheer and the right stuff to cheer about. I don’t want to be about hating Auburn and being against them. I mean, I’m sure there will be some of that because of the nature of this rivalry, but it needs to be an educated basketball crowd that cheers winning plays that understand what it takes to win at a high level. You know, the hustle plays, the blue-collar plays, the defensive stops. We need it to be loud to will us to stops, and you know what, I think we’ve got a pretty good basketball fan base. I think we just need to focus on cheering winning plays on Saturday night.”

When we’re talking 15-20 years ago and No. 1 vs. No. 2 is happening, it was probably involving Kansas or maybe an edition of Duke vs. Carolina. But this is an SEC game and your remaining seven league games are all against ranked opponents. What does Saturday’s game and stage say about what has been the best conference performance in a single season that we’ve ever seen?

“You’ve got to give a lot of credit to [SEC Commissioner] Greg Sankey, the SEC, and all of the athletic directors in the league for putting an emphasis on getting basketball up to the level. Now, we’ve got a long way to go on that because SEC football has been outstanding for a long time, but at least for this season, we’re at that level. And I think there’s a lot of credit that belongs to the coaches who are scheduling appropriately. When I first got here, a lot of the teams in our conference were putting together weak non-conference schedules, to put it mildly. But now, they’re bringing it to these big-time games and getting wins.

“Missouri beat Kansas and Dennis [Gates] has done a great job. Buzz Williams is scheduling significantly harder than what it was when I got into the league. Bruce [Pearl] scheduled the toughest non-conference schedule in the history of Auburn Basketball. So I think it’s the priority put on basketball by the league, the level of coaches that have been fired, the job each one of the coaches is doing, and we’re all pushing each other to make each other better. I mean shoot, there’s no easy games in this league. We lost to Ole Miss and they barely survived past South Carolina, who hasn’t even won a game in our league. That’s a tough out at South Carolina, it is. There’s no easy games. Everybody did their job in the non-conference.

“We went 14-2 in the ACC Challenge. When I was growing up in Wisconsin, the ACC and Big East were king. The Big Ten garnered attention too, but the SEC wasn’t what everybody dreamed and hoped for. I was watching the ACC and Big East every single night. But it’s gotten to the point now where I think it’s an exciting brand of basketball. We’re leading the country in scoring, and we’ve led the country in scoring the last two years. And other teams in our league are playing entertaining styles too.

John Fanta is a national college basketball broadcaster and writer for FOX Sports. He covers the sport in a variety of capacities, from calling games on FS1 to serving as lead host on the BIG EAST Digital Network to providing commentary on The Field of 68 Media Network. Follow him at @John_Fanta.

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