Bruce Pearl:<\/strong> Right now you\u2019re starting to see the beginning of some of the fruits of the labor that the SEC basketball team has planted. I\u2019m talking about Mike Slive, Greg Sankey, Dan Liebowitz, Mike Tranghese, Mark Whitehead, the coaching hires and the commitments on campuses. When our third or fourth-best team, South Carolina, can put 65 in the second half on the best program in the country in Duke, it sends a strong message that SEC basketball might be better than what it\u2019s perceived.<\/p>\n SLAM: How can the SEC annually get six or seven teams into March Madness?<\/strong><\/p>\n BP:<\/strong> We need to win more games in November and December and have more teams in the top 25\u2026 When the top of our league gets better and wins, it pulls all those teams in the middle up [in terms of metrics like RPI] and that\u2019s how to start getting six, seven, eight teams in the tournament.<\/p>\n SLAM: What\u2019s your outlook for Auburn and the postseason next year?<\/strong><\/p>\n BP:<\/strong> For the first time since the Chris Porter Sports Illustrated cover [circa 1999] people expect us to get to the [NCAA] Tournament, and they should\u2026 I think it is a very attainable and realistic goal for us to finish in the upper division of the SEC next year based on what I return and what we\u2019ve recruited. We were the only team in the nation last year to finish with its top four scorers as freshmen.<\/p>\n SLAM: Do you think SEC basketball suffers from a general national perception that the SEC is a \u201cfootball conference\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n BP:<\/strong>\u00a0Why is being \u2018a football conference\u2019 a bad thing? It\u2019s not a bad thing. It\u2019s a great thing. We\u2019ll always be a football conference and be proud of it\u2026 When we win in softball, gymnastics or swimming as often as we do, does that make us any less of a football conference?<\/p>\n SLAM: You told me, in the past, opposing coaches from other conferences used the SEC\u2019s football success to dissuade Tennessee and Auburn basketball recruits. What would they say?<\/strong><\/p>\n BP:<\/strong> Things like, \u201cYou\u2019re not going to get treated the same way as the football team\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re not going to get to eat in the same cafeteria [where] the football team eats in, you\u2019re not going to have the same tutors, you\u2019re going to go to the same level of strength training \u2014 there\u2019s not the same level of interest\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not true. Our guys get the same respect, the same opportunities, the same adoration.<\/p>\n SLAM: Speak to some of the cultural differences between \u201cbasketball conferences\u201d and the SEC.<\/strong><\/p>\n BP:<\/strong> In November, in so many places around the country in high-major conferences, it\u2019s starting to get cold. They\u2019re ready to get inside and they\u2019re ready for basketball season to start. That\u2019s not the way it is on our campuses in November and even in December. And that\u2019s what gives some of these conferences a head start on us.\u201d<\/p>\n In a lot of [SEC] places, in November, we\u2019re just getting warmed up. We haven\u2019t had the Iron Bowl yet. You haven\u2019t had Auburn vs. Georgia yet. We\u2019re just getting warmed up in November in football \u2014 are you kidding me?<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/GettyImages-459645918-634x437.jpg\")
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