Auburn basketball legend Bruce Pearl is expected to retire as head coach after 11 seasons with the program, according to ESPN's Jeff Borzello and Pete Thamel. His son Steven, who was promoted to associate head coach in 2023, will succeed his father for the 2025-26 campaign.

This is not the first abrupt departure to rock the sport over the last couple of years, with Tony Bennett shockingly retiring last October, but Tigers fans surely expected Pearl to stick around longer after enjoying a landmark 2024-25 season. While there has been speculation that he will run for Tommy Tuberville's vacant seat in the U.S. Senate, a recent report downplayed the chances of that happening.

Regardless of what the 65-year-old decides to do moving forward, he certainly left his mark in The Jungle.

Before the colorful coach arrived in 2014, Auburn was considered an afterthought within the college hoops landscape. The team had not advanced to the NCAA Tournament in over a decade and compiled five consecutive losing campaigns. Pearl weathered struggles in his first couple of seasons at the helm, but eventually, he found his footing. What followed was an unprecedented amount of success for the program, and an unprecedented amount of enthusiasm among the fan base.

Bruce Pearl redefined Auburn basketball 

Pearl guided the Tigers to two Final Four appearances, six NCAA Tournament bids, two SEC Tournament championships, three regular season league titles and 371 wins. Under his leadership, the squad evolved into a powerhouse that had a legitimate chance to reach the sport's apex in March.

National title contention and sustained excellence had never belonged in the same sentence as Auburn basketball. Bruce Pearl changed how people perceived the Tigers, infusing new energy into Neville Arena. His prowess and persistence reignited the community, and in the process, helped give his team a mighty powerful home-court advantage.

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Obviously, there is no guarantee that the foundation he built will stay in place moving forward, but the four-time SEC Coach of the Year is leaving a program that is completely unrecognizable from the one he joined back in 2014. That is how someone forges a lasting bond with a city and fan base.

Yes, exiting less than a month and a half before the new season begins is brutal and will certainly thrust the Tigers into an unfairly difficult situation — assuming this is not health-related, that is — but history will likely regard Pearl as the man who brought Auburn back to life and then raised it to new heights.

However, this was not simply a case of someone riding into 250 Beard-Eaves Court to save the day. He needed the Tigers as much as they needed him.

Bruce Pearl incurred a three-year show-cause penalty by the NCAA for alleged recruiting violations while leading Tennessee in 2011. He was fired and essentially sent into coaching exile for the next three years. Pearl transitioned into an analyst role at ESPN, before Auburn threw him a lifeline.

He grabbed onto it and did not look back.