Tennessee’s current men’s basketball coach sure is having a much better season than one of Tennessee’s former coaches.
Although Rick Barnes and his No. 25 Volunteers have not lived up to expectations as the preseason Southeastern Conference favorites, they still have a slew of attainable goals entering Saturday’s noon showdown against Bruce Pearl’s scuffling Auburn Tigers inside Auburn Arena. For Pearl, the only coach in Tennessee history to take the Vols to six consecutive NCAA tournaments and to the Elite Eight of the March extravaganza, waking up from this winter nightmare can’t occur soon enough.
Auburn began Pearl’s seventh year at the helm with a self-imposed postseason ban and with five-star freshman point guard Sharife Cooper facing an eligibility issue. Fellow freshman Justin Powell ran the point for most of the first 10 games before suffering what has become a season-ending concussion, and Cooper’s dazzling play after being cleared by the NCAA was abruptly halted by an ankle injury last weekend.
Cooper, who has played in 12 games and averaged 20.2 points and 8.1 assists, did not dress out in Tuesday night’s 74-57 loss to visiting Florida that saddled the Tigers with an 11-13 overall record and a 5-10 league mark. He isn’t expected to play against the Vols (16-6, 9-6 ).
“It’s just a culmination of how many times we’re going to get hit in the gut,” Pearl said this week on a Zoom call. “Before the season even starts, we made the decision to penalize ourselves because we think that is what’s coming, and we’re trying to get something that happened four years ago behind us. That was a tough shot for the kids.