The Calling Cards of Bruce Pearl: Hard Work, Dedication, and a Reliance on Faith

Coming off Auburn men’s basketball first ever trip to the Final Four, Athletic Director Allen Greene decided it was time to reward Head Coach Bruce Pearl for all his success.

Greene praised Pearl, saying under his leadership, the basketball program has reached “new heights”, with the young men he leads “continuing to thrive in the classroom and on the court.”

Because of this, Auburn agreed to terms with Pearl on a five-year contract extension, stretching his contract through the 2023-2024 season. Pearl has taken the program to new heights in just five seasons as head coach. He transformed it from one that hadn’t reached the NCAA tournament since 2003, to one that now boast a 2018 SEC regular-season title, a 2019 SEC tournament title and the aforementioned Final Four appearance.

Given the circumstances, Pearl and the Auburn Tigers seem to be on comfortable with the current direction of the program heading into the off season. One might wonder, how did he do it, how has Pearl experienced such success at Auburn? The calling cards of said success over the course of his 37 year career have been his legendary work ethic, his tireless determination, and an unshaken reliance on his faith.

Originally from the inner city of Boston, Pearl grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts, a community located about 25 minutes south of Beantown. “I had a great family, great parents, a great sister and lived in a great town growing up,” Pearl said. It was in this great town of Sharon, only seven miles away from Gillette Stadium where the New England Patriots play, where Pearl’s love of basketball started to come to fruition.

The first basketball team Pearl was ever a part of in Sharon was his 7-year-old squad, “Team Six.” Dudley Davenport, the head basketball coach at the local Sharon High School, had a son on the same team as him, which meant he was at every game not only watching his son play, but Pearl as well. Because of this scenario, he wanted to prove himself at an early age.

“The very first organized team I played on I was already being scouted,” Pearl said with a smile.

The competitive nature and the passion for sports he possessed only grew over the coming years and it led to him becoming one of the best athletes in his area. “During my freshman year of high school, I was probably the best athlete in my class. I was always the first one picked on the the playground and I won everything I played,” Pearl said. As a result of his competitiveness however, he admitted that he wasn’t always the nicest kid growing up and he put a good bit of his identity into how great of an athlete he was.

Everything changed for Pearl during his freshman year of high school when he experienced a near career ending knee injury while playing football. Pearl said, “God brought me back down to Earth that day and my identity had to change because I could no longer be the best athlete in town.” Pearl responded to his situation by becoming a better student, getting involved in the school play, becoming the class president and of course, starting coaching.

“The one thing that didn’t change for me was my love of sports even though I could no longer physically dominate,” Pearl said, “I started coaching. All the way through my high school days, I was always coaching kids, so obviously it was something that was in me early on in my life.”

In terms of coaching inspirations for Pearl, Red Auerbach, nine time NBA Champion and head coach of the Boston Celtics, was someone he read a lot about. He explained that he also had the benefit of watching a young Rick Pitino and Jim Calhoun, who were both coaching at schools nearby. “As a result, I think I was ahead of the game because I was able to witness some of the great coaches right there in Boston before they became hall of famers.”

After graduating from Sharon High School, Pearl decided to attend the university right down the road at Boston College. While in Newton, he decided to try out for the basketball team there where he was good enough to make the team, but not good enough to stick. Fortunately for Pearl, the head coach at the time, Tom Davis, who also served as Pearl’s mentor, saw something in the young Boston native and encouraged Pearl to stay involved in the program.

Pearl started off as a student manager for the team, but according to him that wasn’t enough. “I couldn’t just be satisfied being a manager, so I started to help sell tickets, but I couldn’t just be satisfied doing that, so I became the Director of Student Basketball Promotions, but that wasn’t enough, so I became the Director of Basketball Promotions as an undergraduate.” Pearl expressed how he always tried to take whatever opportunity he was given and do the best he could with it regardless of whether he was rewarded for his work or not.

“I never did it for the reward,” Pearl said, “I did it because I liked making a difference.” That is something he tries to instill in his players and the coaching staff to this day, to make yourself important in an organization and make an impact, even if you are not the star.

Following his graduation from Boston College, Pearl decided to pursue coaching as a career. He served an assistant coach at Stanford and Iowa for five years each before landing his first coaching job at Southern Indiana in 1992. Pearl said that his time as an assistant was invaluable because he put the same level of care into the job as the head coach would.

“It might have been his job, but I felt like it was my job,” Pearl said, “Even though I couldn’t nearly help the team as much as the head coach could because of his knowledge and experience, I still took ownership of my role.”

Pearl admitted that as much as he loved coaching, he would think about how his fellow graduates from Boston College were ahead of him financially early on in his career. “They were making millions and I was making hundreds,” Pearl said.” However, he never originally got into coaching for the money, rather because it was a ministry in teaching and he loved the game of basketball.

Because of this, Pearl continued to coach and has experienced great success by doings so. In 1995, he led the Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles to a Division II national championship and as a result, he was named the NABC Division II coach of the year.

He then took his talents to Milwaukee in 2001, where he collected a total of 86 wins over the course of four seasons. In the 2005, Pearl led the team to a Sweet 16 appearance, upsetting Alabama and Boston College by using an intense full court press on defense. Pearl finished his four seasons at Milwaukee as the Horizon League's all-time leader in winning percentage with 79.7 percent, with a record of 51-13 during conference play.

After his time in Milwaukee, Pearl was hired by Tennessee in 2005, where he inherited a team who went 14-17 the year prior and transformed them into a number two seed in the NCAA tournament in just one season. During his tenure at Tennessee, he took the Volunteers to the NCAA tournament every year he was there and won an SEC regular season championship in 2008. On Dec. 3, 2008, Pearl won his 400th game as a head coach, becoming the sixth fastest basketball coach to reach the impressive mark and the second fastest among active coaches at the time.

After his time in Tennessee, Pearl eventually landed to where he is today, in Auburn, Alabama. Upon his arrival on the Plains in 2014, he was greeted by over 100 fans at the Auburn University Regional Airport. Fans were ecstatic about how he could potentially turn around a program that had not experienced a winning season since 2008.

Coming in, Pearl had a plan and a vision for the team, to experience the level of success that other teams on campus enjoyed. “The first step was to raise the level of expectations of the current players at the time for their program,” Pearl said, “They wanted to play hard, but they didn’t really think they could win, so we had the set the bar higher for them.” Pearl provided them a set of attainable of goals and showed them a path that would eventually lead to success.

The next step for Auburn was to start recruiting better players, players who wanted to work harder, players that had a chip on their shoulders. Even though Pearl was able to recruit some of the highest rated prospects in the program’s history in Mustapha Heron, Austin Wiley, Chuma Okeke, Horace Spencer and Danjel Purifoy, Pearl also focused on recruting diamonds in the rough like Jared Harper, Bryce Brown, Anfernee Mclemore and Malik Dunbar. This was something that would make Auburn special in the years to come, rosters filled with talent and players who felt like that they had something to prove.

The final step for Pearl was to make sure the community understood that the only way the team could be successful was for the fans to come out and support the team. The Auburn family answered the call. The fans, along with the student section, The Jungle, have shown unwavering support for the team throughout Pearl’s tenure in Auburn Arena, even being called one of the best college basketball atmospheres in the nation by legendary ESPN sports broadcaster, Dick Vitale.

“One great thing about this turnaround for the program has been the support of the Auburn family,” Pearl said, “It was like the chicken and the egg, they came out before we ever produced and they helped us to build a competitive program.”

After four seasons of hard work, dedication and changing the culture of the program, Pearl and his team finally got to enjoy the fruits of their labour during the 2018-2019 season. Auburn won the SEC tournament title by defeating the likes of Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Florida and nationally ranked Tennessee. Auburn went on to make a run in the NCAA tournament as a number five seed, taking down New Mexico State, Kansas, top ranked North Carolina and SEC rival Kentucky before suffering a heartbreaking loss to the eventual national champions, Virginia, in the Final Four.

The run the team made this season was one of the highlights of Pearl’s career. “You feel like you are on a magical mystery tour,” Pearl said,”You feel like it is divine, like God is right there on your shoulder all the way through and you feel blessed.” He expressed how fun it was to see the team peak at the right time, make the right adjustments from game to game and be able to help his players navigate through a loaded field.

Pearl stated that in order to make the run that they made, you have to have the pieces of the puzzle to make it work, and he made to credit every one of those pieces. Pearl said, “We had a great point guard in Jared Harper and a great backup in J’Von McCormick.We had a great scorer in Bryce Brown. We had Malik Dunbar and Samir Doughty at the small forward that were versatile. We had Chuma Okeke who was the best player on the floor most nights and Danjel Purifoy who was ready to go when he got hurt. We had Anfernee, Horace and Austin holding down the paint. We had all the pieces of the puzzle and we were able to put it all together.”

Even though the team had its best campaign in program history, Pearl cited that the team feels as if they still have some more unfinished business heading into next season. Pearl said, “Now it's about was this a one-hit wonder, a two-hit wonder, can you do it three years in a row? Can you make history? Can you not only be the best basketball team, but the best basketball program? So there is a lot to play for going forward."

One of the most important aspects of Pearl’s life is his faith. It is something he tries to implement into every part of his life, including his coaching. “As I have gotten older, my faith has gotten stronger and my relationship with God has gotten closer,” Pearl said, “I am blessed to live in a Christian community where I can talk about my faith and the things our team is trying to do.” Pearl stated that it is uplifting to those of faith to hear that the basketball team gives God the glory in everything they do and trust in God through the good and the bad.

With all the pressure and anxiety that comes with being a college basketball coach, Pearl has found that the best way to cope with all the noise is to trust God and his plan for his life. Through his faith, he tries his best to not only help his players be the best they can be on the court, but to become better men off the court. Pearl said, “I don’t have all the answers, but as a coach and as a leader, I try to help my players with as much as I possibly can in order for them to be successful.”

Faith is also a force for Pearl that drives him to perform mitzvah, or good deeds for others and be a light to those around him. He enjoys doing community service while there are no camera or reports around, because he doesn’t do it for any sort of notoriety, but because he believes that it is the right thing to do. Pearl said, “You live it as best you can, you wear it as much as you possibly can, and you pray for others who haven’t found it yet because of the positive difference it can make in their lives.”

One of those notable acts of mitzvah that Pearl has performed during his time at Auburn was the creation of the organization called AUTLIVE. The organization raises awareness of cancer prevention and detection, while t-shirt sales and donations raise money to benefit cancer patients and their local hospitals. Pearl loves being able to provide the much needed resources and services to those in the community who are battling different types of cancer through AUTLIVE, while also seeing the overwhelmingly positive impact the organization makes on their lives.

“It is such a blessing for me to get an email or text message from a stranger saying, ‘Coach, you don’t know me but we have an Auburn connection and I have a friend who would love to hear from you.’” Pearl said, “So you call them and you build a bit of relationship with them. It takes nothing to send a text or call or make a visit to brighten a cancer patients day, let them know how loved they are and tell them they can make it through.”

Because of the seeds that Pearl has planted over the last five years through his contributions on and off the court, he hopes that he can stay rooted in the Auburn community for the remainder of his career. “It would be wonderful if we could make this our home,” Pearl said, “My wife Brandy is comfortable, we have great friends here and I think it is a great fit. With that being said, I have to continue to keep this program competitive in order to stay here and that is our goal.”

At the end of his career, Pearl hopes that people remember him as somebody who tried to be a better man than he was ever a coach and that he gave his absolute best in everything that he does, stating he couldn’t do that without the many people in his life that help him on a day to day basis.

“I’m limited, but you can make up for those limitations with commitment, passion, loyalty and by surrounding yourself with great people,” Pearl said, “I’ve never accomplished much by myself. It has always been because I surrounded myself with a great family and a great team, that is what we have here at Auburn.”