Success is defined by different connotations in college basketball, where a team that wins 30 games can be quickly voted out in March, or a team that doesn’t come close to sniffing out a conference title can advance to the Final Four.
For Auburn in 2021-22, Bruce PearlThe eighth team on the Plains achieved the goal they set for themselves in attracting a group of very talented newcomers during the offseason: winning the SEC. As his Tigers have become more consistent, Pearl often stresses the merits of a regular-season conference championship — and how difficult a feat for a group to accomplish in a grueling season.
Of course, Auburn, as the No. 2 seed, pulled out on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament in an ungainly loss to Miami, which made the Elite Eight the No. 10 seed. The Tigers went 1-2 in the playoffs and have lost four of their last eight games overall.
It’s tricky, Pearl said a few weeks ago, because Auburn has adapted so quickly to a tough non-conference schedule. When SEC competition began, the Tigers were playing their best basketball.
But it’s hard to maintain over an entire season. So the “did they peak too early?” this argument, in Pearl’s eyes, is almost redundant. If Auburn hadn’t hit their stride in early January, but were perhaps better positioned to do so in March, would they still have won a championship?
“I think we worked so hard to be good enough early to win,” Pearl said. “Yeah, I would say we ended up peaking in late January, early February… at some point in the season, whether it was Oklahoma (game), Alabama, Kentucky, on the road a few places where we played good basketball.
“If this team peaked, did it peak too soon? Or did he peak in time to be able to win those games? And then you don’t win those games and you don’t get to the top, so you end up in a different situation.
Led by its defense, Auburn still topped the polls for the first time ever and set program records for regular season wins (27) and conference wins (15).
As the pages turn more heavily to the offseason and the 2021-22 campaign begins to dip into the rearview mirror, let’s take a look back at how Auburn stacked up statistically by the end of the year, and how that compares to Pearl’s previous seven. seasons at the helm.