Bruce Pearl has only once prior scheduled a non-Division I opponent during his time as Auburn’s basketball coach. He hosted and played North Alabama — now a D-I program on Jan. 3, 2015.
It makes sense that the next time Auburn will do that is on Wednesday when Mississippi College comes to the Plains. And Pearl outwardly admitted that the Choctaws won’t be anything close to the primary focus in the coming days.
“We’ll take tomorrow off, and we will definitely spend a couple of days preparing for our Maui opponents,” Pearl said. “And then we’ll get ready for Mississippi on Tuesday and play and then we travel to Maui on Thursday. There’ll be heavy days in the office this weekend studying our Maui opponents.”
This is a smart strategy, and the point to say all of this is that it was probably a premeditated one. Auburn effectively gave itself 10 days off in between No. 25 Washington and its next competitive game. It gives the Tigers time to relax, prepare, study the opponents, and get a tuneup in against a team it will likely crush without much thought.
The Tigers will start off the Maui Invitational at 9:30 a.m. Maui time against Xavier on Nov. 19. Then they’ll play either San Diego State or Duke the day after. Nov. 21 will feature a game against either Arizona, Iowa State, Gonzaga or Illinois. There are only tough games in that bracket, an it will be tremendous early barometer for how good this No. 11 Auburn team actually is this year.
The first test for the Tigers was a resounding success. They crushed South Alabama by 43 points, then put a similar 22-point hurting on UW — the first ranked team to come to Auburn in the nonconference in 12 years.
“If you can beat Washington by 20, you can go to Maui and compete,” Pearl said. “Xavier will be really good. Really good. San Diego State or Duke, really good. So we’ll focus on our bracket this week. We’ll focus on those three teams. And, uh, just keep working on getting better. But I’m very pleased.”
Not every team going to Maui took the same scheduling approach. For example, Xavier will play Wisconsin on Tuesday. Duke still has two games before going to Maui. Gonzaga actually plays Texas A&M on Thursday — the same day Auburn travels for Hawaii.
The point is, Auburn is putting a lot into this trip. They’ve built in time to give themselves the best chance. Throughout the preseason, Pearl has referred to the Maui trip in different contexts — whether it was in regard to when players would get healthy, or how conditioned they’d be to play three straight games. It’s a big tournament for this program, and they’re treating it as such.
“I think the kids are confident in each other and what we’re doing,” Pearl said, “and they know we have unfinished business.”