Bruce Pearl jabs Koa Peat for snubbing him, Auburn during recruiting process after debut with Arizona

In a season where many expect true freshmen to have a major impact across college basketball, the entire country got introduced to one in Las Vegas. Arizona‘s Koa Peat put together a show on Monday night, helping the Wildcats take down the reigning national champions, the Florida Gators. Expectations were high for Peat and he delivered.

Tommy Lloyd is thankful to have Peat on his team but plenty of others wanted him. One of those was Bruce Pearl, who just recently retired after finding success for Auburn. Now working for TNT, Pearl had an opportunity to interview Peat and brought up that fact.

“Hey, Koa. This is Coach Bruce Pearl,” Pearl said. “Do you remember a couple of years ago when I traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, trying to chase you and AJ Dybantsa to maybe come to Auburn? And neither one of you even gave me a sniff. You remember that?”

The answer from Peat was yes, he does remember getting recruited by Pearl. But instead of talking about Auburn, he spoke on Dybantsa — who ended up signing with the BYU Cougars — and their relationship. Turns out, the two were roommates when representing the United States.

“Yeah, for sure, I do remember that. AJ’s my guy, man,” Peat said. “That’s my roommate (for Team) USA, that’s my boy.”

Peat played high school basketball at Gilbert (AZ) Perry, where he was a Five-Star Plus+ prospect. He was the No. 8 overall recruit in the 2025 cycle, according to the Rivals Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

He lived up to the hype and then some. Peat dropped 30 points on Florida, also adding seven rebounds and five assists. This comes against a Gators team returning plenty of talent from the national title-winning squad, looking to pull off back-to-back championships.

If Peat has anything to say about it, Arizona will be right in their way. Yes, it’s only Nov. 3 but you never know how the bracket will shake out in March. We could easily see Arizona and Florida matched up again and in a much higher-stakes game.

Back to Pearl’s comments — Auburn was not a finalist in Peat’s recruitment. Announcing his decision back in March, four other schools factored into the equation — Arizona State, Baylor, Houston and Texas. As everyone now knows, Arizona won out to keep the highly-rated prospect within state lines.