Bruce Pearl has stepped down as the lads’s basketball coach at Auburn and can transfer into an envoy’s function within the athletic division as particular assistant to the athletics director, the college introduced Monday.
Steven Pearl, Pearl’s son and the Tigers’ affiliate head coach, acquired a five-year contract as this system’s new head coach.
Expensive Auburn Household, I actually love you.@CoachBrucePearl x #WarEagle pic.twitter.com/xFJAEetMLv
— Auburn Basketball (@AuburnMBB) September 22, 2025
Bruce Pearl, 65, is coming off a season through which he guided Auburn to its second-ever Remaining 4 look. The Tigers earned the No. 1 total seed within the NCAA males’s match after successful the SEC regular-season championship, racking up 32 wins earlier than falling to Florida within the nationwide semifinal.
He has been the pinnacle coach at Auburn for 11 seasons, main the Tigers to 6 NCAA match appearances and each of this system’s Remaining 4 runs. Throughout Pearl’s time at Auburn, the Tigers earned at the very least a share of three SEC regular-season titles and gained two SEC match championships.
He went 246-125 at Auburn, however solely 232 of these wins are acknowledged due to NCAA infractions that led the Tigers to vacate video games from the 2016-17 season.
“Eleven years in the past, I used to be given the chance of a lifetime to grow to be the pinnacle basketball coach at Auburn, and it has been nothing wanting superb,” Pearl stated in a press release. “With the Auburn Household’s unwavering help, we have now constructed a program from the bottom up and brought it to heights it had by no means reached earlier than. Not solely have we gained championships, however we have now constructed the very best home-court benefit in school basketball, we have invested on this group and adjusted lives, and we have developed and graduated Auburn males. We constructed a program with the core tenants of religion, household and keenness, and collectively, we made historical past. I hope we have now made Auburn proud.”
Pearl has lengthy been linked to a post-coaching profession in politics, one thing he addressed in early September following monthslong rumors concerning him as a possible candidate for Tommy Tuberville’s open U.S. Senate seat, however he stated Monday he isn’t operating for Senate.
“A lot of you already know that I believed and prayed about perhaps operating for United States Senate, perhaps to be the following nice senator from the state of Alabama,” Pearl stated. “That might’ve required leaving Auburn. And as a substitute, the college has given me a possibility to remain right here and be Auburn’s senator.”
Earlier than taking on at Auburn, Pearl had been the pinnacle coach at Tennessee, Milwaukee and Southern Indiana. He went to the NCAA match in all six of his seasons with the Volunteers, together with three Candy 16 appearances and one Elite Eight run. He was fired in 2011 after being charged by the NCAA with unethical conduct after mendacity throughout an investigation into recruiting violations.
Pearl was given a three-year show-cause penalty by the NCAA, with Auburn hiring him 5 months earlier than it ended.
Steven Pearl performed 101 video games for his father at Tennessee from 2007-11. He then was a medical gross sales consultant for 3 years earlier than becoming a member of the Auburn workers in 2014, and was promoted to affiliate head coach earlier than the 2023-24 season.
“I am extremely grateful to President Dr. Roberts, Athletics Director John Cohen, and your complete Auburn management crew for entrusting me with this once-in-a-lifetime alternative,” Steven Pearl stated in a press release. “In a way, I’ve spent my lifetime getting ready for this second, studying from top-of-the-line in BP, and constructing a basis rooted in character, exhausting work, and team-first values. We’re not beginning over — we’re constructing ahead, with the identical rules which have made Auburn Basketball elite. I am honored to steer this program, and I am able to rise to the second.”