Mark WiedmerIt may well become the lasting memory of this 2019 NCAA men's basketball tournament, as unforgettable in its own way as Christian Laettner's shot to send Duke over Kentucky in the 1992 East Regional final or Villanova's Kris Jenkins swishing a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to topple North Carolina in the 2016 NCAA championship game.
His august Auburn basketball team having just run this year's UNC squad out of Kansas City's Sprint Center in the Midwest Regional semifinals Friday night, coach Bruce Pearl was asked about the serious knee injury suffered by star forward Chuma Okeke midway through the second half.
Almost immediately the passionate Pearl's voice cracked, his lips quivered, tears formed in his eyes.
"Chuma (pause) Ch-h-h (another pause) Chuma was the best player on the floor," Pearl began. "He, he's hurt. He's hurt. But we're going to rally. I'm going to go hug on him."
Then Pearl walked away, briefly stopping on the court to share a fist pump with joyous Tigers fans before disappearing into the arena's back hallways, wiping away his tears along the way.
For anyone watching, tissues weren't optional. They were required. If you didn't need one, you're in need of a heart.
But that moment also showed the sports world why more than 36,000 Tennessee basketball fans once signed an online petition to "Bring Back Bruce" during the winter of 2014, hopeful the Volunteers brass would rehire him as coach three years after he was forced off Rocky Top for lying to the NCAA about relatively minor violations.
That grassroots effort didn't work. The school's administration held firm, leaving Pearl to rehabilitate his image and revive his career at Auburn. At 2:20 this afternoon on CBS, that makeover could become complete if the coach's fifth-seeded Tigers can upset No. 2 seed Kentucky in the regional final to send Auburn to the Final Four for the first time in school history.
One other thing: It would also be Pearl's 100th victory at AU in his fifth season on the job. Talk about a landmark victory to inspire a second "rolling" of Toomer's Corner in less than 48 hours.
Yet regardless of what happens today in Kansas City, Pearl always has had that human touch, that rare ability to inspire both an individual and the masses with equal success. No one can market his program better than Pearl, who has continually sold out Auburn games since coming there at the start of the 2014-15 season. Few can inspire an unsung team to greater heights than Pearl, who has worked wonders on and off the court everywhere he's been.
Unfortunately, few coaches still being paid vast sums of money to coach have raised more eyebrows than Pearl along the way. NCAA concerns at Wisconsin-Milwaukee became fireable NCAA offenses at Tennessee. Though Pearl has not been directly tied to the FBI investigation into widespread corruption in college basketball, his former assistant and all-time Auburn great Chuck Person has pleaded guilty to attempting to steer certain Auburn players to certain agents.
If you're counting at home, that means there have been serious issues at Pearl's last three NCAA employers, which isn't anything to roll Toomer's Corner over.
But every person is, to some degree, a walking contradiction. Sports Illustrated wrote a story this past week about Pearl and Auburn during their stay in Salt Lake City last week for the first two rounds of the tournament. The eight teams there were each assigned a bus driver, who drove them from their hotels to the arena to anywhere else they wanted or needed to go, including team dinners at restaurants.
The Tigers' bus driver, Clay Sanders, told SI: "When the other (drivers) drive their teams to dinner, they stay on the bus while the (players and coaches) eat."
But not Pearl. He invited Sanders to eat with the team. He also gave him game tickets to watch Auburn in the regional.
"You're part of this thing," Pearl told Sanders.
Said Sanders: "(Pearl) has made an Auburn fan for life."
March can be a cruel mistress. Whether it's the three blind mice in stripes who swallowed their whistles at the end of the Duke-Central Florida game, or the official who blew his inside the final two seconds of regulation in Tennessee's loss to Purdue, or Okeke's tragic torn ACL, or the usual tears from losing graduating players such as the Vols' Admiral Schofield or North Carolina's Kenny Williams, it often becomes March Sadness more than March Gladness.
But it certainly seems more alive and interesting with Pearl once more in the middle of it.
"And what you see on a television interview doesn't tell you one-tenth of the good things he does," former Vols great Dane Bradshaw said Saturday afternoon. "When it comes to charity work or helping someone in need or bringing a smile to someone's face, there are 10 times the stories out there that no one hears about compared to the ones they know."
As Pearl was wrapping up his NCAA media responsibilities Saturday afternoon, he decided to inject a moment of humor into earlier questions about none of his players having been recruited by bluebloods such as North Carolina, Kansas or Kentucky before signing with Auburn.
"I want to go on the record with something," he said. "I wasn't recruited by North Carolina, Kansas or Kentucky, either. I want to go on record and say that. I'm a mutt, too."
But as the Big Orange Nation first learned more than a decade ago, more times than not Pearl's a lovable, loyal mutt worth having around.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.