NCAA Basketball rewind: Most impactful coaching hires after 2014 season

2. Bruce Pearl (Auburn)

Auburn has had a few runs of success in basketball, but historically speaking isn’t really a basketball program. The days of Charles Barkley had long passed by 2014, with the program having finished under .500 more times than not since the turn of the century, including the last five seasons. However, Auburn brought aboard a new coach to bring some success back to the Tigers basketball program.

Simply put, Bruce Pearl was a winner everywhere he went. He began his career playing and coaching under the great Tom Davis, with coaching stints at Stanford and Iowa. Then he won a D2 national title at Southern Indiana. Then he led unheralded Milwaukee to a Sweet Sixteen before six great years at Tennessee. Though his reputation had been tarnished by recruiting controversy, he took the Auburn job, eager to get back and make his mark on college basketball again.

Pearl got his recruiting shoes on and by his fourth season had led Auburn to a regular season title in the SEC, plus a long-awaited return to the NCAA Tournament. However, the real success came in 2019, leading Auburn on a run all the way to their first Final Four. No matter what happens in the rest of his tenure, that Final Four run made Pearl’s hire leaps and bounds beyond anything previously done for this program.