Bruce Pearl On Recruiting

[Wild Turkey]

How Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl's recruiting philosophy has changed over the years

With the transfer portal's popularity increasing, Auburn basketball's Bruce Pearl has been forced to change his strategies, and it's working.

www.gadsdentimes.com

I think Bruce nailed the below point and would add NIL is going to create a defacto auction for those kids:

"If you look at the teams that have gone and advanced to the (NCAA) tournament, they're older," Pearl said. "And it's really, really hard — it's hard for freshmen to come in and play a lot and play early. So, sometimes freshmen come in and they're very promising, but they're not willing to wait around with the sophomores and juniors, where they can actually have impact.

"So, we're going to have — and you'll see this in Power Five — there are going to be Power Five schools (that) are going to take one or two freshmen every year, instead of three or four. ... Half the freshmen are going to have to go somewhere else, and then get re-recruited out of the portal. I don't make the rules, but I've got to play with them."

 

[jontaejones]

How Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl's recruiting philosophy has changed over the years

With the transfer portal's popularity increasing, Auburn basketball's Bruce Pearl has been forced to change his strategies, and it's working.

www.gadsdentimes.com

I think Bruce nailed the below point and would add NIL is going to create a defacto auction for those kids:

"If you look at the teams that have gone and advanced to the (NCAA) tournament, they're older," Pearl said. "And it's really, really hard — it's hard for freshmen to come in and play a lot and play early. So, sometimes freshmen come in and they're very promising, but they're not willing to wait around with the sophomores and juniors, where they can actually have impact.

"So, we're going to have — and you'll see this in Power Five — there are going to be Power Five schools (that) are going to take one or two freshmen every year, instead of three or four. ... Half the freshmen are going to have to go somewhere else, and then get re-recruited out of the portal. I don't make the rules, but I've got to play with them."

The problem is that the recruiting period is different from the portal.

You can't just take two freshmen and assume you'll fill spots in the portal, plus not knowing who else will leave.

But Nova totally whiffed in the recruiting period, and the portal gives them a chance to be semi-competitive next year.

Also for schools like UK, Duke, Kansas, theoretically it should work in their favor. Because if they take 4-5 freshmen, and 2-3 don't play and transfer out, well ... everybody wants to go there, so they just fill in with a transfer. But hasn't been the case yet.

 

[Hitman Hart]

Bruce Pearl is a snitch btw

 

[Wild Turkey]

The problem is that the recruiting period is different from the portal.

You can't just take two freshmen and assume you'll fill spots in the portal, plus not knowing who else will leave.

But Nova totally whiffed in the recruiting period, and the portal gives them a chance to be semi-competitive next year.

Also for schools like UK, Duke, Kansas, theoretically it should work in their favor. Because if they take 4-5 freshmen, and 2-3 don't play and transfer out, well ... everybody wants to go there, so they just fill in with a transfer. But hasn't been the case yet.

Auburn took the following number of freshman:

2022 - 3
2021 - 2
2020 - 5

Now Bruce is doing a good job of grabbing transfers and keeping them for multiple years but the trend is less freshman.

The one and done has bleed a lot of quality talent but you just have to deal with it. Bruce is right though to make a deep run in the NCAA you need veterans as freshman can rarely handle the pressure.