Auburn’s 2025 basketball season never got off the ground, but Steven Pearl believes the 2026 version of the Tigers is built on a completely different foundation.
Last year’s team finished 17-16 and missed the NCAA tournament in Pearl’s first season as Auburn’s head coach after Bruce Pearl’s sudden retirement. This offseason, Auburn took a sharp turn in how it assembled the roster, adding 11 players from the transfer portal and shifting away from the grab-the-best-available approach it used in 2025.
The biggest change, Steven Pearl said Tuesday at SEC media days, is depth. Last season, Auburn never had much margin for error.
“Last year we had stretches during the season where if a guy was a little dinged up, we really couldn’t have a productive practice because we only had six or seven guys that we felt like could play in the rotation,” Pearl said at SEC media days on Tuesday. “I’m in a place now this year where we feel like we have 13 guys that could really play meaningful minutes and contribute for us this year.
“Now, our rotation won’t be 13, but the ability to be able to deal with injuries, deal with foul trouble, and obviously in this crazy world we live in while we’re still figuring out eligibility, it’s nice to have that many pieces that you can plug and play as the year goes on.”
Auburn kept its backcourt from last season, bringing back Kevin Overton, Tahaad Pettiford, Simon Walker and Blake Muschalek. Around them, the Tigers added a wave of new faces: Thomas Dowd from Troy, Bukky Oboye from Santa Clara, Owen Freeman from Creighton, Adam Olsen from South Alabama, George Kimble III from Vanderbilt, Kolby King from Utah State, 7-foot center Narcisse Ngoy from France, Lithuanian guard Mantas Rubštavičius and high school wing Caleb Williams.
Overton said the sheer volume of change has worked in Auburn’s favor.
“It’s night and day,” Overton said. “I think we shoot it better, we guard better.
Obviously, we’re taller. The potential of what we could be is definitely way higher.
Our ceiling is where it needs to be.”
Pearl also pointed to a stronger coaching staff presence around the program this summer. He said this team has stood out for its work ethic, calling it one of the hardest-working groups he’s coached since he joined the Auburn sidelines in 2014.
“Yeah, I think that’s part of our job as coaches to be able to identify players that have high work ethics and really want to live in the gym,” Pearl said. “One of the biggest challenges that I made to my staff in this offseason was being more present.
Not just one or two guys, but the whole staff really being present in that gym every single day, working guys out. I thought the staff really responded to that this summer.
“Every day I would come in or every day I would leave there was two or three coaches down there on the floor with two or three different players, and I think that’s really important when you are talking about time invested with your players and with your program. It’s a group, like we talked about earlier this summer, that’s really bought into working hard and putting the time in.
That’s infectious. I think this group has really used that as their identity, and I think it’s allowed us to continue to make strides through this offseason.”
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