Bruce Pearl talks about his approach to roster building with transfer portal

Roster construction has changed drastically during the 2020s when it comes to college hoops. Whereas the five-star freshmen used to be the prized recruits every year, now there are plentiful star transfers that hit the open market every year and have been utilized as a primary roster-building foundation for many programs. That’s certainly been the case at Auburn and was even before the new rules were implemented a couple years ago allowing for players to transfer without sitting out.

In some ways, Bruce Pearl yearns for the days of old, when the transfers he landed had to sit out a year and improve themselves before stepping on the court. But even with the new rules, Pearl is still leaning heavy on imports to fill out his lineup, even more so than freshmen.

This season, he has a mix of both. He’s got some solid transfers coming in as well as a top-20 freshman guard in Aden Holloway. Then, there’s also a handful of homegrown talents and transfers from previous years returning. It’s a tough job finding pieces from so many different avenues to fill out a roster and Pearl really isn’t sure if the current climate is best for the sport, since college hoops is also overrun by fifth and even sixth year guys at the moment thanks to COVID.

So here was his long-winded breakdown of how he’s trying to adapt to the modern strategies of roster-building while trying to hold on to the values that got him here. You can watch his comments here or read them in full below:

Bruce Pearl on the current state of roster-building

“Basically, the last two years, top 100 high school players in the country, roughly between 16 and 18 of those players average double digit minutes and double digit points in power five. That means if you’re not a McDonald’s All-American, a large percentage of top 100, you’re just not playing as much you used to play because of COVID fifth and sixth years and guys being older, because the grad transfer, because the transfer portal, because of exceptions.

“The one-time transfer is fine. I used to sit out somebody all the time and have them get a year older and a year better. DeSean Murray, Samir Doughty. I love bringing guys in and having them sit out and what a benefit that was. And I never looked at sitting out as a penalty. It was about getting bigger, getting stronger, getting academically more comfortable, investing in your body and your game and your academic. Sitting also helped get with graduation rates. We don’t hear anything about graduation rates anymore, nothing about APR, none of that stuff anymore that used to carry the day. We’re still doing a great job with all that stuff.

“But make it a one-time transfer and if you decide you want to use the one-time transfer to be eligible right away, great! Use it. If you don’t want to use it and you want to sit out you still have it your back pocket in case you want to use it. But now what they’re doing is they transfer, they get eligible right away, and they transfer again and they appeal it and they win all these appeals for mental health or other challenges or whatever, because the NCAA is not willing to fight that fight.

“The NCAA has told us: we’re not granting appeals, that’s what our compliance people have told us, so we didn’t bring any transfer folks on appeal, they were all good to go. And there were a lot of guys out there that had already transferred that we could have gotten that we chose to not take, because this is what the NCAA said. We’ll see what’s going to happen in the fall.

“The idea is: getting older, that’s the deal. We’ll take one or two high school players every year, one or two, maybe four or five in two years. So last year, we only took one in Aden Holloway. This year, we may take a couple more, but the days of taking three and four high school players every year are over right now. The NCAA tournament showed us that you got to get older and so we have got a roster this year at Auburn that is older and more experienced. I think that should help us.”