Steven Pearl was done with basketball in 2011, burnout overwhelming a lifetime of love for the game as the son of a coach.
Three years of successful medical sales later, basketball pulled him back in — and even if father Bruce Pearl couldn’t have guessed it at the time, this would be a critical moment for the Auburn program he was overtaking.
“What do you mean, go with me? Go with me and sell hospital supplies?” Bruce Pearl recalled of the conversation.
“No, I want to help you turn Auburn around like we turned around Tennessee,” Steven replied.
“I kind of looked at him like ‘The Godfather’ looked at Michael,” Pearl said. “It was like, ‘I never wanted this for you. I thought you’d be Senator Corleone. President Corleone.’ But this was absolutely what he wanted.”
And though nepotism naturally invites questions about the competence of the person with access to a coveted situation simply through blood ties, the questions have changed over the course of the best stretch in Auburn men’s basketball history. As the No. 1 overall seed Tigers prepare to take on No. 5 seed Michigan in the South Regional semifinals on Friday in Atlanta, then perhaps No. 2 seed Michigan State or No. 6 seed Ole Miss with a trip to the Final Four on the line, they go like this:
How much of this program’s success can be traced specifically to the work of Steven Pearl?
Should he be the one to take it over when his 65-year-old father eventually decides to retire?
Iowa star guard B.J. Armstrong was the first person outside the Pearl family to hold Steven, the second of four children born to Bruce and his first wife, Kim. It was 1987. Bruce was a Hawkeyes assistant under Tom Davis at the time, soon to have a program of his own.
Steven fell in love with the game as a kid in Evansville, Ind., where his dad’s first head coaching job brought big success to Southern Indiana, including a Division II national championship in 1995. He’d hang around the gym all day with his friends and tag along on the team bus to games. Basketball got serious for him as a player in high school in Milwaukee, with Bruce Pearl taking Wisconsin-Milwaukee to a Sweet 16 in his fourth season.
That led to Tennessee for both of them, Steven eventually passing on interest from lower-level schools to walk on and play for his dad starting in Pearl’s third season there. He transformed from an all-state scoring guard to a bulked-up defender and glue guy so he could earn minutes. They got Tennessee to its first-ever Elite Eight in 2010, losing a heartbreaker to Draymond Green and Michigan State.
Steven Pearl played for his father at Tennessee from 2007-08 through 2010-11. (Chris Chambers / Getty Images)
A year later, Steven wanted away from the game. His career had just ended with an NCAA Tournament loss to Michigan. His father was fired three days after that and eventually given a three-year show-cause after admitting to lying to NCAA investigators about a recruit coming to a cookout at his house. Steven dropped out of graduate school and took a medical sales job with Stryker.
“I just kind of got burnt out, especially with how things ended at Tennessee,” Steven said, and three years of working outside of athletics offered advancement, money and a different perspective.
“Sales obviously correlates with recruiting, and the job was cool, very competitive,” he said. “But you win or lose in basketball and you have your team and staff to celebrate with or be miserable with. The camaraderie, the team aspect of things, that’s what I missed and what you really don’t get on that side of the world.”
Auburn hired Bruce Pearl in 2014, five months before his show-cause was up. Once he embraced the fact that Steven wanted this life, too, he hired him as an assistant strength coach. That led to a role as director of basketball operations, focused on team travel and other daily logistics. He finally promoted Steven to assistant coach in April 2017 after Chad Dollar left for South Florida.
A few weeks after that, Steven drove up to Nashville to hang out with one of his UT buddies for the weekend. A group of them went out to a bar to watch the sports story that had taken over the city — the Nashville Predators making a Stanley Cup Final run. Steven and Brittany Farrar bonded over their shared disinterest in hockey.
The next morning, Steven showed up at the Nashville gym that Brittany co-owned to get in a workout. One of her employees asked her if that was Bruce Pearl’s son.
“Who is Bruce Pearl?” she said.
Steve and Brittany are in their third year of marriage now and she has become very acquainted with her father-in-law — the enthusiasm, the intensity, the volume, always on high.
“They are the two most dedicated people I know,” she said of Bruce and Steven. “But personality-wise, I would say they’re quite different.”
They go by “BP” and “SP” in the Auburn program. Bruce Pearl has been called “BP” since his early days of coaching.
“As long as I can remember,” Steven said. “I haven’t called him ‘Dad’ since high school.”
Coincidence or not, the addition of “SP” to the coaching staff ushered in winning at a high level. The Tigers went 26-8 and won the SEC championship in the 2017-18 season, then went 30-10 and made the only Final Four run in program history the next season.
Pearl made his son associate head coach and defensive coordinator before the 2023-24 season. Auburn jumped from No. 33 to No. 6 nationally in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency rankings in Steven’s first season in that role, and the Tigers sit at No. 12 entering Friday’s Sweet 16 game.
“He brings a toughness to our staff and to our team and our program,” Auburn assistant coach and “offensive coordinator” Mike Burgomaster said of Pearl. “Kind of the way he was as a player, doing all the dirty work or putting his body on the line. That’s kind of how he is as a coach.”
“SP” is an introvert compared to “BP.” Most people are. But Steven has a soft-spoken, intellectual vibe about him. Until something fires him up.
He called out Auburn stars Johni Broome and Chad Baker-Mazara for their lack of energy on Auburn’s radio network after the Tigers’ first-round win over Alabama State. He leaped into a chest bump with Broome after a perfect defensive possession and shot-clock violation in the Tigers’ second-round win over Creighton.
He is, for players and coaches, “almost an intermediary,” he said, when it comes to communicating with the always intense “BP.”
“He’s like a big brother to all of us, man,” said Auburn senior guard Chris Moore, who cited Steven’s ability to translate for younger players the “Tiger language” that Pearl uses when he gets into deep basketball terminology.
“He can say things to (Bruce) that the rest of us — I won’t say we can’t say them, but we might struggle to say them,” Auburn assistant coach Chad Prewett said of Steven. “He doesn’t mind saying it because of that relationship.”
That has helped shape the roster, as Pearl has taken a lead recruiting role along with assistants Ira Bowman and Corey Williams. The Tigers built very different rosters with different kinds of players, many of them not celebrated, and have won three SEC titles and two SEC Tournament titles since 2017.
It has also helped shape — and change — basketball philosophy. Bruce Pearl is a self-described “gambler” who built his style on high-tempo basketball. But this team has a tremendous post scorer and passer in Broome, plus guards in Denver Jones, Miles Kelly and Tahaad Pettiford who are effective shot makers — but not blurs who excel at creating for others in transition.
“SP” came with a lot of data for “BP” early in the season, speaking on behalf of the rest of the staff, showing why this team would be much more effective at a slower pace. This team’s adjusted tempo is just No. 147 nationally this season, down from No. 59 last season. The Tigers are No. 3 in offensive efficiency.
“If you are able to show BP facts and analytics that support what you’re trying to show him, he’ll usually roll with it,” Steven said.
Continuity has helped Auburn — Williams is the only member of the staff who hasn’t been with Pearl for at least the past six seasons. The dynamic is “no jealousy, no envy, no pushing and pulling like other staffs,” Bowman said.
And continuity has been discussed when it comes to Bruce’s eventual retirement. There’s no coach-in-waiting designation from Auburn at this point, but it’s possible the Pearls could be like the Meyers, the Bennetts, the Drews and others in being granted a father-to-son succession plan. Once Vito Corleone had to relent and let Michael run the family business, he put him in the best possible spot to succeed.
“Listen, Auburn would be very fortunate to have Steven and this staff be able to continue this work when I retire some day,” Pearl said. “He’s been ready for years. He has stayed here knowing he could be a head coach at a lot of other places or associate head coach at a lot of other places. Todd Golden would love to have him on his (Florida) staff at any time — they’re best friends and brothers. He has stayed with his father. And what we’ve done, we clearly have done as a family.”
Even if Auburn wins two games to reach its second Final Four, neither will qualify as the best win in Atlanta of the season. Nothing is going to top Dec. 14, 2024. That’s the day Auburn crushed Ohio State 91-53, and the day Lainey Marie Pearl was born.
“Our little miracle,” Steven said, and one of two grandchildren born to Pearl in the past year — along with his daughter Jacqui’s daughter, Noa Rose — thanks to in vitro fertilization.
That makes four grandchildren for Pearl, with a fifth on the way. At some point, he will have more time to devote to his role of “Papa” to Noa, Lainey, Chaya and Jaden (with more to come). The title matters, too. His “Papa” was Jack Pearlmutter, who emigrated to Boston in 1929 from Ukraine.
“He was 11 years old with three siblings, and he raised that family without his parents,” Pearl said. “He was an Orthodox Jewish man who was a plumber. Not exactly your stereotype, right? I mean, he was my everything, so hard-working and so kind. I had him until I was 13 years old and he was my best friend.”
Brittany and Steven Pearl, with daughter Lainey. (Courtesy of Steven Pearl)
When his children were struggling to conceive, Pearl said he went to a holy spot in Israel with his wife, Brandy, to pray for their fertility.
“Praying loudly,” he said. “Shouting my prayers into the Hills of Judea.”
If confirmation was needed, there it is — Bruce Pearl doesn’t do anything quietly. He was outspoken as well about a controversial ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court in February 2024 that deemed frozen embryos as “children,” causing fertility clinics in the state to pause services.
This disrupted Steven and Brittany, who were in the middle of their third attempt at IVF treatments. Which was hard enough on its own.
“Mentally, it was a lot,” Brittany said. “You never expect to be someone who struggles with fertility, but I think it made us stronger for sure. And just more ready to be parents. We put a lot of tears and work and love into creating a child.”
Pearl called the court ruling “reckless” and invited Alabamians to protest at the state capitol in Montgomery. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill on March 7, 2024, shielding fertility clinics from legal liability for providing their services. The Pearls’ process continued. And this time, it worked.
Steven thought he was safe traveling to Atlanta on Friday, Dec. 13 for the Ohio State game. It was a big game. The due date was still a week away. And it was his turn on the staff to do the scouting report on the opponent. Around 2 a.m., he got the call from Brittany — her water had broken.
Steven jumped into his car for a 90-minute drive back to Auburn that he reduced by a few minutes. It was only a few minutes after arriving at the hospital that Brittany went into labor. Lainey was born at 5 a.m.
About eight hours later, after tears of the good kind, after much acquainting and little sleeping, the game tipped off. Steven held Lainey as he watched.
“A great way to keep your emotions in check,” he said.
It also helped that Auburn led 49-21 at the half. Steven’s phone buzzed shortly after the first-half buzzer. It was “Papa.” He got all the latest on the first few hours of his granddaughter’s life. And Steven had something else to tell him. That lineup that hadn’t played together all season, the only lineup that got outscored in the first half?
“Maybe we shouldn’t experiment with that one anymore,” Steven said.
(Photo: Jake Crandall / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
