Fire Bruce Pearl?

Hell no. Auburn had only been to 8 NCAAT tournaments before Pearl. They literally won the SEC last year and he's put their program on the map. Plus, he's a pretty cool person. Yesterday before the game, he went into a student center, brought Chick-Fil-A, and talked to every student who came up to him.

You can go back through posts and notice how all the we should or should have hired names fluctuate wildly based on brief runs of success.

Then those coaches struggle and their names are replaced by a name who's team is having a good season or even just a good month.


Nothing wrong with it since it's a message board for discussion.


However, it certainly highlights the degree which almost all hires are Russian roulette aside from a few coaches still in their primes but also with 15+ years of consistent highest level success that a Kentucky is able to lure.


Not to mention, that many of the great seasons which make coaches the "hottest" names are part of 6 or 8 year span that has a lot of ups and downs.

I would much rather take a coach from a smaller school who has shown they can identify and recruit talented players, has shown the ability to develop those players, and gets the best out of them each game. I don't watch basketball enough to be able to identify a coach with those characteristics, but that is what I would want.

From the furthest I can get, just looking at the box scores, I would have to say that Avery does not get the best out of his players. It seems they get up for big games like Kentucky and Tennessee, but have no motivation against other teams. That is a direct reflection of the head coaches ability to lead his team.

I don’t want Pearl. Never have, never will. But you can’t deny the man can coach basketball. He’s taken Auburn basketball to a level of excitement they’ve seldom if ever have seen. So they are having a mediocre year after last season’s incredible run. In years past this season would have been considered a success on the Plains. So nobody is ready to run Pearl after one so-so season. And they could still put it all together and get on a roll and make the tourney or even win the SEC tourney. The OP is just pissed because some of us aren’t happy with the guy on our sidelines.

Mercurial? I was in the Fire Avery camp about halfway through last season when we were struggling to make the tourney with a lottery pick who had to shoulder the team and drag them into the Dance singlehandedly. And I’ve not wavered since.

Let me clarify. I don’t want to fire Avery, I really don’t. He’s a nice man and a good recruiter and he’s sold the program well when it was in the dumps Grant left it in. He’s done a lot of good things and I appreciate that as a Bama fan. But I’ve also seen enough to know he’s not a very good basketball coach. It would be best for all parties involved if he got a call from an NBA team for a front office job right after his season ends at Bama and he took it. Jr. is out of eligibility so that’s not a factor. Avery would be happy, most Bama fans would be happy and everyone gets what they want without an ugly firing.

If he stays, well we have the basketball version of Bill Curry. We play out of our minds against the Tennessee’s and Kentucky’s while we struggle and get blown out by Northeastern and an Auburn team having a hard time putting it together this year. Until we show up and they run us out of the gym by 21 points. It’s been his MO every season. Lather, rinse, repeat. We’ll always be just an above average (and just above .500) team with some impressive wins and some butt ugly losses. If you’re satisfied with that for Alabama basketball, then Avery is your man.

Pearl could get Alabama to the Final 4. Would love to have him - saw him at a disability congference one time do an amazing thing for a young man. Quality guy.

Period.

Phil, when Auburn shoots like they did against us, they give lots of teams problems. That statement isnt just coming from me. Pearl said after their Ole Miss loss that when their point guards isnt hitting 3s, they struggle. Auburn and their fans hate us a lot more than we hate them. One of our players said after the game down there that Auburn has the best fans in the country. The truth is he only experiences that because he is playing for Alabama. Their game right before that vs Missouri was described as being very subdued. Heck, Saban cant even beat them on the football field in Auburn. You go down to a basketball game at the barn and see what its like, then come back and blame it all on Avery. I know Avery piped in noise at practice and all that to try to get the players ready for what was coming, but its not the same. Nick Saban described it as a Sht Storm after one of our losses at the barn. Its a lot worse in a closed in building that outside at a stadium.

He was going after another title then.

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No offense to be seen today and lost by 27 to the same Kentucky team that ‘Bama beat a month ago.

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Don't forget that Auburn kicked Bama's arse

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Hell no. Auburn had only been to 8 NCAAT tournaments before Pearl. They literally won the SEC last year and he's put their program on the map. Plus, he's a pretty cool person. Yesterday before the game, he went into a student center, brought Chick-Fil-A, and talked to every student who came up to him.

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I mean the latter doesn't really matter -- there are a bunch of pretty cool people who aren't good basketball coaches.

And every program has expectations. Look at Andy Kennedy, for example. He was by far Ole Miss' most successful coach of all time yet at a certain point any fan will get tired of a program plateauing at a level less than elite. Another example is Rick Barnes -- he made the tournament at Texas 16 out of 17 years and still got fired, and even though he currently has Tennessee's most successful team since the Hopson Pearl teams, some Tennessee fans are breathing down his neck.

Pearl is a pretty good coach who's done a good job of building a competent program at Auburn but his teams also tend to be inconsistent and volatile and he'll probably eventually be a victim of his own success. I get that this thread was meant to be an analog to the "fire Avery" thread and it's not a very good one, but Pearl certainly isn't infallible.