Auburn's rebuilding year ends with incredible run

AUBURN – After the first of what would turn into a remarkable run of three wins in as many days, Bruce Pearl offered some perspective on Auburn's first SEC Tournament win since 2009.

"We won a 13-12 (seed) first-round game," Pearl said after beating Mississippi State on Wednesday, "but it's a step."

Auburn took a step, a hop and a giant leap last week, knocking off Texas A&M and LSU teams that were fighting for their NCAA Tournament lives to advance to the semifinals. A team that won just four conference games in the regular season picked up three in less than a 48-hour span and became one of the biggest stories in the sport.

"The first couple are upsets but (beating LSU), put them all together, it's pretty astounding," Pearl said.

A rebuilding year, which had veered into a ditch with six straight losses due to a depleted roster to close the regular season, closed in unbelievable fashion, with K.T. Harrell's heroics against LSU on Friday serving as an exclamation point.

"This is something that will always be remembered," said Harrell, who was named to the SEC all-tournament team Sunday. "When Coach really turns it around and they begin to get to the (NCAA) Tournament, the big games, they'll always look back at this year and say this is when it started. To me that's special, and it's something that I'll always remember."

Even with a lopsided sendoff at the hands of No. 1 Kentucky on Saturday mired with the last-minute suspension of Cinmeon Bowers due to a "possible rules violation," there was nothing that could diminish the accomplishments of a team that nobody gave a chance to reach such heights for quite some time.

"It's Saturday in the SEC Tournament," Pearl said. "I remember being at Tennessee and that was huge — get to Saturday, get to the final four, and we've done that. Our goal was to try to be relevant."

There were missed opportunities along the way, games with Coastal Carolina, Texas Tech, Alabama, Missouri and Georgia that could have gone Auburn's way with one or two shots, but after 31 games the Tigers reached their highest level.

"If we played like this in the beginning we wouldn't have had this problem," guard Antoine Mason said with a grin. "We would've won a lot more games, a lot of closer games would've went our way, but we laid the foundation for next year and they know it starts off on defense."

Pearl's first Auburn team, assembled largely by his staff as he served out his NCAA show-cause penalty, was a hodgepodge of players who predominantly transferred from other programs, who never had the time to fully learn his system or how to play as a team.

But you have to start somewhere.

Auburn basketball was in an abyss when Pearl arrived last year, having endured one of the worst stretches in the history of the beleaguered program and near the bottom of all of college basketball. It is not there anymore.

"(It) makes you feel good about the way it ended," Pearl said. "We got a long, long way to go to have this program where we all think it can be."