Bruce Pearl

Bruce Alan Pearl (born March 18, 1960) is an American college basketball coach who is currently the head coach of the Auburn Tigers men's basketball team. He previously served in the same position for the Tennessee, Milwaukee, and Southern Indiana. Pearl led Southern Indiana to a Division II national championship in 1995, during which he was named Division II Coach of the Year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. In Division I, his teams have won four conference championships and three conference tournament championships, and qualified for ten NCAA tournament appearances and one Final Four. Pearl is the second-fastest NCAA coach to reach 300 victories, needing only 382 games to reach this mark (Roy Williams needed 370 games at Kansas to reach this milestone). Pearl was named Coach of the Year by Sporting News in 2006 and was awarded the Adolph Rupp Cup in 2008. He also served as the head coach for the Maccabi USA men's basketball team that won the gold medal at the 2009 Maccabiah Games. Personal life A native of Boston, Pearl attended Sharon High School in Sharon, Massachusetts. He is one of the few Division I basketball coaches who never played high school basketball, even at the junior varsity level (being the only head coach in the 2022 NCAA tournament with that distinction); a shoulder injury while playing football in his first year of high school prevented him from further pursuing sports as a player. Pearl is a 1982 graduate of Boston College, where he served as the manager of the men's basketball team.