Auburn coach Steve Pearl on Michigan basketball: ‘Hell of a team’

Former Auburn coach Bruce Pearl had a courtside seat as a TNT analyst watching his son Steve’s Tigers team get dismantled by Dusty May and Michigan. Much of what he could muster was, “they’re better than I thought they were” during a 102-72 blowout. 

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The Wolverines moved the ball well, played stifling defense, and made shots — a lot of them open looks beyond the three-point line (14) — in the win.

“They’re good. When they make 14 threes, I think they beat anyone in college basketball. I really believe that,” Pearl said. “They’ve obviously ratcheted up their level of play. Having a couple of really close games was really good for them. Wake Forest, and I think that was in Detroit, gave them everything they could handle and almost beat them in overtime, and TCU had them on the ropes.

“For really good teams, it’s good for teams like that to go through stuff like that to really expose some weaknesses and things you have to work on and improve. And credit to Dusty and his staff. They did that this week so far.”

His team is 10 new guys still figuring it out, he added, and has a long way to go. At the same time, Pearl was very complimentary. 

“They have a hell of a team over there. They’ve got a lot of really, really nice pieces,” Pearl continued. “But when they shoot the ball at that rate, nobody’s beating that team. They made 14 threes, they averaged eight, and we missed 15 free throws. So, in a 30-point game, those numbers can start to add up. 

“I just thought our attention to detail defensively wasn’t great. We talked about loading to the ball and ball screen. And every time we got into a ball screen, they hit a short roll and there was no one there to tag them. And Morez Johnson just kind of walked down the lane and had a nice layup. But … a good basketball team. They had guys that made shots that typically don’t make shots, and sometimes you’re going to run into a buzz saw.”

And they made it easier on them, too, by allowing them to get comfortable for 40 minutes, he noted. There will be much better defensive teams than the Wolverines saw last night, and Pearl acknowledged, “you’ve got to make that team uncomfortable to be able to bother them, but we didn’t do a good job of that at all.

Defensively, meanwhile, his team had no answer for the Wolverines’ length at the rim, going 31 precent on twos. But Pearl was more impressed with the way the Michigan guards got after it on the perimeter. 

“Offensively, for us to have three assists on 22 made field goals, that’s probably the lowest in the last 11 or 12 years since we’ve been here,” he said. “So, their switching bothered us. They did a good job being disruptive, and we just didn’t share the ball. I thought there was way too much “my turn” in the first half, and we have to do a better job of sharing the ball in those situations. Offensively, we slopped through stuff early in the game. That kind of set the tone for them to guard and it gave them confidence.

“… The length doesn’t really bother you until you get closer to the rim. So, I think we didn’t do a great job of sharing it in transition. We didn’t do a great job of sharing it once we got into the paint. We forced some tough shots. Their size, their switching 1 through 4 is going to disrupt people. They’ve got guys that can move their feet … obviously, once you get close to the rim, that length is real. They had five blocked shots tonight, but they alter a lot too with their length. I thought their guards did a really good job of disrupting our timing and framing us and not letting us run our stuff tighter to the 3-point line. I thought it was more on their guards than it was on their bigs.”

Whatever it was, the Wolverines dominated on both ends to improve to 5-0 heading into the Players Era Festival title game against Gonzaga tonight.