Bruce Pearl discusses difficulty of managing roster with transfer portal

The transfer portal era has been a whirlwind for college sports, and each coach is having to navigate it differently based on the situation their outgoing players leave them in.

Auburn Men’s Basketball head coach Bruce Pearl is no different. He lost three players to the portal after this past season, and he’s had to compensate for it in the portal and through recruiting high school talent.

“Roster management has never been more challenging. March, April and early May were three incredible work months for us. All day, all weekend because of roster management,” Pearl told Auburn Live. “It broke my heart to lose kids to the portal, to see some guys leave.

“But that’s the nature of if you don’t get in enough, you’re not happy with your role, hop in the transfer portal and start to compete in the NIL space.”

Pearl saw freshmen Yohan Traore and Chance Westry enter the portal after playing smaller roles than they had hoped for during their first season. Longtime Tiger Allen Flanigan also opted to enter the portal after playing for Auburn for four seasons. All three are hoping for brighter, more profitable ventures at another high-level program.

“There are no limits. There is no structure. It’s free agency without a salary cap,” Pearl said of the portal crossing into NIL territory. “If we’re going to have an NCAA, a national champion — there needs to be what the NCAA had, which was much more of a consistent, fair, similar playing field.”

On the flip side of the three palyers leaving, Pearl has used the portal to bring in SF Chaney Johnson and SG Denver Jones, though they aren’t coming into the program from national powerhouses or anything like that, having played for Alabama Huntsville and FIU, respectively.

Auburn also has a one-freshman class as of this report. Prolific Prep’s Aden Holloway, the No. 18 overall player and No. 2 CG in the 2023 recruiting class, per the On3 Industry rankings, a proprietary algorithm that compiles ratings and rankings from all four primary recruiting media services, will be the only first-year collegiate athlete in Pearl’s group.

Still, the Tigers return most of their roster from last year, and with the additions of Holloway, Johnson and Jones — Auburn has a core foundation to build their 2023-2024 season around.

Two games have officially been announced for the Tigers’ upcoming season. They’ll battle the Baylor Bears inside the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Nov. 7. Later that month, they’ll host Virginia Tech as a part of the ACC/SEC Challenge on Nov. 29.