SPORTS

Bruce Pearl to open Auburn career against former team

James Crepea
Montgomery Advertiser
Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl will open tenure on the Plains against his former team, Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

AUBURN -- Bruce Pearl will begin his Auburn coaching career against one of his former teams.

The Tigers will open the 2014-15 season at home against Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where Pearl coached from 2001-2005, he told the Montgomery Advertiser on Thursday.

"(Milwaukee was) an NCAA tournament opponent from a year ago," Pearl said. "That's the thing: How do you upgrade a schedule? You play teams that played in the tournament a year ago."

Milwaukee went 21-14 last season and earned the Horizon League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, its first trip since 2006, with an improbable run in the conference tournament after finishing fifth during the regular season. The Panthers, a No. 15 seed, were eliminated by Villanova in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

UWM will not be able to reach the same level of success this season though, as the Panthers are ineligible for postseason play after failing to meet the NCAA's Academic Performance Rate (APR) benchmark (930). Milwaukee lost its final appeal of the postseason ban on April 9 as its four-year APR fell to 908 after a 2012-13 score of 852.

Pearl's trying to radically improve Auburn's non-conference strength of schedule and RPI, which were among the worst in the SEC under Tony Barbee. He inherited a slate with just one non-conference game scheduled (at Clemson) for the upcoming season and can't be too picky.

"I'm two games away from being finished," Pearl said of his non-conference schedule.

Pearl said he has six home games and three road games – all of which (Colorado, Texas Tech and Clemson) have been previously reported or announced – and "a couple" of neutral site games he's "working on." He hopes to add two more home games and stressed contracts have not been completed yet.

Pearl confirmed he has an agreement in place for a three-game series with Middle Tennessee, first reported by AL.com last week, that has the Blue Raiders coming to the Plains this season, with neutral site games at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville in 2015 and at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center during the 2016-17 season. The Daily News Journal reported this year's game is tentatively set for Dec. 29.

"It's consistent with philosophically the way we'll try to schedule," Pearl said. "I want to play in Birmingham, if not every year, every other year."

Going to Nashville is important to Pearl because it is the site of the SEC tournament for nine of the next 11 seasons.

"I want to take our team, play them on that floor, play them in that arena, stay in that hotel, get them acclimated a little bit," he said. "Middle (Tennessee) is a good enough team that finishes at the top of their league. It makes a lot of sense."

The period between Thanksgiving and when Auburn's spring semester begins in mid-January is when Pearl is looking to schedule neutral site games, which are significant in improving a team's RPI.

Scheduling UAB, who like MTSU is in Conference USA, is also on Pearl's radar – but not in a home-and-home series.

"(UAB coach) Jerod (Haase) has done a great job with that program; his team is ahead of mine right now," Pearl said. "I've said we'll play two (neutral site games) for one (home game). I got a few tweets from some of the UAB fans 'Great we'll play you twice in Bartow (Arena) and once in Auburn' I thought that was great.

"Could we find a way to do something that's creative with twice at Auburn, once at Bartow and once in Birmingham and figure out a way to do it? But I'm not playing them home-and-home because I won't play Conference USA in home-and-home…(I) just try to be fair, try to be consistent."