With the start of the NCAA Tournament just two weeks away, the most prominent conversation in college basketball isn’t focused on the bluebloods in Durham or Tucson, but on the undefeated bubble team in Oxford, Ohio.
Miami (Ohio) boasts a sterling 30-0 record heading into its regular-season finale against rival Ohio on Friday, but it’s not necessarily guaranteed the school will be dancing this postseason. Currently 88th in the country in the KenPom rankings, the RedHawks’ only surefire path to the NCAA Tournament is to win the Mid-American Conference Tournament and secure the league’s automatic bid.
The debate over Miami’s tourney hopes ballooned this week when former Auburn coach turned TNT Sports analyst Bruce Pearl ripped the RedHawks’ resume. Pearl’s comments were especially notable as his son, Steven Pearl, succeeded him as Auburn’s head coach this season. Like Miami, the Tigers are also considered a bubble team for the NCAA Tournament.
Speaking with Front Office Sports on Wednesday, Miami athletic director David Sayler fired back, questioning Pearl’s place in the media given his apparent biases.
“I heard his comments. It was more about, ‘I don’t think they’re a tournament team,’” Sayler told FOS. “I also heard some ‘we’s’ in his comment when talking about Auburn, which I didn’t think was appropriate for an analyst.”
Sayler said he was particularly irked by Pearl’s subsequent appearance on FS1’s Wake Up Barstool, in which the four-time SEC Coach of the Year predicted the RedHawks would finish in the lower half of conferences such as the Big East. The Miami AD called the analysis “disrespectful to our student-athletes.”
More than anything, Sayler is upset his program’s potentially historic season is being overshadowed by an increasingly chippy media narrative. Sayler said he doesn’t want to lose sight of what the RedHawks have accomplished—and took his own swipe at Auburn’s resume in the process.
“We’ve got people online talking about how it’s bad for the sport and they’d rather see a 12th-place Big Ten team or an 11th-place SEC team who’s 6-10 in the league,” Sayler said, in apparent reference to the Tigers. “And I just completely disagree. I’m not having it. Our team deserves to be in this tournament. And I believe they will be, no matter what.”
