Bruce Pearl: "You can't compare Auburn and Tennessee"; cites AU storming court

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"The situations weren't even close to the same. We had a lot of good players on the roster when we walked in there. Major Wingate, Andre Patterson, C.J. Watson, Chris Lofton, JaJuan Smith. Those are good basketball players that Buzz Peterson left us with. They had a good infrastructure in place. They were winners in both football and women's basketball, so we saw it as a sleeping giant. We knew it wasn't going to take long to become a top 25 type program. It took us less than a year. They had everything you need to be successful already there, and that's not a shot at Auburn, that's just the truth. Auburn is doing everything they can to help us. It's been awesome but it's not the same.

The best example I can give you, John, is our win over Kentucky and Tennessee's. We rushed the floor, took the fine and all that and that's great for our kids and our students. That was a great environment. But you see Tennessee come back and beat Kentucky last week after being down 21 and it was no big deal. They're used to winning big games there. We did it, Coach Martin did it. Coach Barnes has beaten Kentucky, South Carolina and Florida in Thompson-Boling already this year. It's just about expectations.

You saw it after we left, they were still winning 20 games, they almost made a final four two years ago under Coach Martin, obviously this year it's tough with all the turnover, but it's just totally different than our situation here.

Everything we accomplish here, it's either something new or something that hasn't been done in a long time. We hadn't beaten Kentucky in 18 tries, this year was our first win over Tennessee since I was there. First win over Alabama in three or four years. Everything is new. We only have one player left on our roster from when we got here. There just wasn't much there. I know we're going to get it done eventually, but we're going to continue to struggle this year. You can't compare Auburn and Tennessee.

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