Video & Quotes: Bruce Pearl, Auburn players preview Michigan

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Bruce Pearl, Johni Broome, Miles Kelly, and Dylan Cardwell were on the podium to preview Auburn’s Friday night game with Michigan.

Q. I’m not sure if you’ve heard or seen, but former Coach Chuck Person is supposed to be at your game this weekend. Has that been a motivator or a distraction for your team at all? Have you paid attention to that?

BRUCE PEARL: I haven’t really paid attention to it. I know Chuck’s in Atlanta, so I’m sure like all of our other former great Auburn Tigers, Chuck’s excited about his team being in the Sweet 16.

Q. I was going to ask you about playing and also portaling right now. We’ve heard a lot of coaches just talk about the difficulty in that right now. How are you sort of balancing trying to win a National Championship and rebuild a roster for next year?

BRUCE PEARL: I loved Tom Izzo’s response. I loved it. It was authentic. It was real. He is laser focused right now on trying to give his team the best chance they possibly can to advance to the Final Four. I get it completely.

I’m not spending any time on it. I’m focused on, like Coach said, what we’re doing. I’ve made a couple calls, but not many, just to reach out. We’ve got a big staff, so our guys are just letting the potential prospects know that we’ve got work to do. Hopefully we’re working for a couple weeks. But when our season is over, we’ll begin to put that roster together next year.

I think the only other thing I would say about it is this. I was also on the NAB committee for trying to figure out when the best time to open the portal. I’m glad that the portal has gone from 45 days to 30 days because I think 30 days is enough time for those guys to decide whether they want to stay or whether they want to go.

I think the reason for the timing of doing it just after the Sweet 16 is almost all the teams in the country except 16 teams the season’s over. So if you’re a student-athlete and you’re at another Division I institution and your season was over at the beginning of March, you’re supposed to have to wait three or four weeks until the Final Four’s over before you can move on with the rest of your life?

So I think the National Association of Basketball coaches kind of looked at, hey, what might be best for all the student-athletes when they decided to kind of do it at this window. Yeah, it’s a little inconvenient for 16 teams, but these other student-athletes need to be able to figure out what’s going on for the rest of their lives.

And just so you know, I’m also not a big fan of this transfer every year. We’re teaching the kids to flee, not fight. I think the one-time transfer is great. I think the grad transfer is great. I always had guys transfer and came in, and in that year where they were not eligible to play, they got caught up academically, they got caught up physically, and they were so much more valuable after spending a year on campus understanding the system, and it would be like bringing back another veteran.

I don’t make the rules, but I got to play by them.

Q. Bruce, you’ve obviously coached a lot of basketball, seen a lot of teams. How many 7-footers together have you seen like this in this Michigan lineup? And how many times have you seen two big men run the offense the way that they do a lot of times at Michigan?

BRUCE PEARL: I haven’t seen this since I watched McHale and Parish, right? These two guys are special. Goldin, in the Big Ten he was the best player on the floor almost every single night.

And Wolf, there’s not another 7-footer in college basketball that resembles him. He’s got Larry Bird type ball handling, passing, feel. He’s just a gifted, gifted player. Obviously they work beautifully together.

They’re going up against Dylan Cardwell and Johni Broome and Chaney Johnson, those three guys are going to be the focus of our defensive attack. Our ability to defend those two guys as well as No. 42 comes off the bench and shoots it a little bit for them, is going to be really the difference in the outcome.

Q. Coach, I wanted to ask you kind of a two-parter. One, couldn’t help but notice the bracket. There’s some teams you faced in the past at Tennessee that ended a few seasons. Kind of trivially, it’s a little bit trivial, but take note of that. Then getting back to Izzo, asking about adjusting to the game, when you’re talking about a 70-year-old coach who’s done this long a time, do you see a lot of differences? In truth, what are the adjustments outside of NIL, transfer portal that we’ve seen over the last 10, 15 years?

BRUCE PEARL: In all fairness, and for full public disclosure, Mike covered me at Tennessee when I was a coach there. So he remembered us losing the last game of the season to go to the Final Four to Michigan State. He remembered me losing my last game as coach at Tennessee to Michigan in a first round game.

So when Mike may have saw that bracket, it may have been the first thing that came to his mind. It was not the first thing that came to my mind. Alabama State came to my mind. Creighton or Louisville came to my mind. This weekend we’ve got a four-team tournament against Michigan, Michigan State, and Ole Miss.

Michigan is as good as anybody in this field. They are. And I told our guys, I felt like Creighton could be in this group very easily. They made 4 out of the last 5 Sweet 16s, and I told our guys, if we can beat Creighton, when we get to Atlanta, there’s not going to be anything there that’s going to be beyond overwhelm us, or maybe even the Final Four.

If we’re good enough to beat Creighton, if we’re good enough to beat Michigan.

And of course, the survive and advance thing, I think that’s really true for the first and second round for a 1 seed. It is about survive and advance for the top seeds. You get to this point, we feel like we’re playing for a National Championship now, and we have four times we’re going to have to do it. That’s how I feel. I’m just telling you how I feel.

You don’t feel like you’re playing for the National Championship in the first and second round.

I love Coach Izzo because of his authenticity. I love him because he’s so 100 percent real. And I love him because he speaks for the coaches. He represents us extremely well. But at the same time, nobody loves their student-athletes more than Tom Izzo.

So he gets the idea that we’re finally able to compensate our student-athletes and we’re finally getting caught up in a system that was just delayed in recognizing the value of our student-athletes.

At the same time, I think what happened in the questioning, somebody was asking him about where he was in the portal, like he was going to be worried about it. I’m not worried about it right now. Neither is he. It’s not taking any time away from him.

The adjustments, we still have guys at Auburn that have been here four to five years. Dylan Cardwell, five years. Chris Moore, five years. Last year Jaylin Williams was five years. We still do it the old fashioned way. At the same time, we have added some tremendous pieces through the transfer portal.

Most of our transfer portal guys were guys from junior college, Division II, Mid-major. I’m so proud of a guy like Johni Broome, who comes from a very mid-major background, Denver Jones, Chad Baker-Mazara, Chaney Johnson, all those guys. They speak to the American dream, the story. It doesn’t matter where you start. It’s all about where you finish.

So changing in the profession, you’ve just got to adjust with the rule changes.

Q. I’m just curious, you talked about keeping a strong presence in Atlanta, recruiting, all that kind of stuff. What would a couple tournament wins — I know you play here annually, but what would a couple tournament wins do for maybe boosting that Atlanta strength a little bit?

BRUCE PEARL: It’s great to be in Atlanta, and it’s great to point out the quality of Atlanta basketball, particularly in high school basketball. It’s as good as it is anywhere in the country.

But honestly, winning here won’t mean anything when it comes to recruiting anymore. I love to talk about Walker Kessler and Jabari Smith and Chuma Okeke and JT Thor and Sharife Cooper and Jabari Smith and about seven or eight Atlanta kids that are in the NBA that developed at Auburn, won championships. But right now, when it comes to recruiting, I don’t know how much that means to an Atlanta high school player.

Right now it is more about the NIL. It’s become way more transactional. They don’t care about the fact that I’ve graduated 46 student-athletes in the last 11 years, that I’ve graduated 33 African American men in the last 11 years. That stuff used to matter. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter as much anymore.

It still matters to me. It still matters to Tom Izzo. It still matters to our university, and I’m proud of it. If you’re uncomfortable hearing it, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for making you a little uncomfortable.

But we are still coaches, and these are still student-athletes, and we still have a responsibility to coach them as hard as we can. But when we’re leaving them now, we need to leave them with a degree, and not just the ability to work at Subway, but to own five of them.

That’s where we are right now, and I’m really happy about that.

Q. After the 2022 season and you lost Jabari and Walker, and since then you probably signed more transfers than you have freshmen. The result has been now you’re here in the Sweet 16. Can you talk about that journey and your journey in recognizing what you needed to do?

BRUCE PEARL: The transfers that we’ve been able to get — I have right now 11 — actually 12 guys on scholarship. We get 13. I have never had 13 scholarship players since I’ve been at Auburn because I can’t keep 13 happy. So one guy gets a walk-on scholarship every single year, and right now I actually have two in that category.

So the reason is you just want to put the kids in positions to be successful. I want to have enough, but I don’t want to have too much. So I’m really, really pleased that with the exception of maybe one or two student-athletes since the transfer portal has opened, every single one of our transfers have come in and have had major impacts, been All-Conference, been starters.

So we pride ourselves on getting the right guys and making sure that we need them. That’s the one thing about it. The difference between recruiting freshmen and young kids, they’ve got to come in and they’ve got to develop. You don’t have to need them right away. If they want it right away, freshmen, you’d better get a great one like a Tahaad Pettiford, otherwise, they’re going to have to be patient.

But when it comes to recruiting transfers, I think we have an obligation as coaches to recruit transfers who can have an impact for us right away, and that’s what almost all of my transfers have done.

Q. A lot of talk about the portal, but I want to ask about your star freshman guard Tahaad Pettiford. Did you kind of know he’d have the confidence to succeed against veteran guards? Was there ever a moment where you were concerned? Also, was there a moment where he kind of broke through for you?

BRUCE PEARL: Tahaad, he comes from a great family, and he’s got great high school coaching and great AAU coaching. His dad has handled him like as good as any father could. He always played him up. He always played him against older kids. And Tahaad was always the smallest guy on the playground. He was always the littlest guy out there.

So therefore, he had so much to overcome, yet he might have been the best player out there. Tahaad was somewhat overlooked. He was ranked 25th, 26th coming out of high school. There aren’t 25 high school freshmen in college this year that are better than Tahaad Pettiford. But he’s got a chip on his shoulder. He’s a little guy, and every time he goes out there to prove it.

I was wrong about Tahaad. I thought Tahaad would come in and be a scoring guard. Don’t worry about running the team. Don’t worry about being a point guard. Just come out and bang shots, guard a little bit, make stuff happen, just do what you do.

Instead, I recognized that, wow, he actually can handle the team. He can break pressure. He can close games. He can be a scoring point guard. So he’s exceeded my expectations as far as being able to play point guard rather than just being a scoring guard.

He had very little drop up-and-down as a freshman. He was very, very consistent. Maybe at the end of the regular season, very beginning of the SEC Tournament, he may not have shot it as well for a couple games, and then he lived in the gym since then. Obviously he had a phenomenal weekend in Lexington to help us advance.

Q. I was wondering if you could speak about any history you have with Dusty May and the fact that he’s rebuilt a roster kind of from scratch and brought them here?

BRUCE PEARL: How good of a hire was Dusty May for Michigan? How good of a hire was that?

A piece of history, back when I was a coach at University of Southern Indiana, USI in Evansville, Indiana, he played for Oakland City and played for Mike Sandifar. So we played them one time.

Then I just remembered him from being on Florida staffs, on Mike White’s staff for a little bit, right? Am I correct about that? Okay.

Then my dad lived in South Florida, and my dad would sort of every now and then go to breakfast meetings with sort of basketball people down in South Florida that love basketball, anything for some bagels and cream cheese, anything. Dusty remembered my dad being at a couple of his breakfast meetings when he was trying to talk to basketball people about building the Florida Atlantic program.

Then the third thing would simply be when he hired KT Harrell. KT was a great player for us at Auburn my very first year. My first year at Auburn, the team had one or two players that belonged to the SEC. KT belonged not only to the SEC, but he was an SEC All-Star. We didn’t have that much to go around him, and our guys knew it. Our guys had, as you would expect, a very tough year during regular season, but they never quit.

Yet our guys knew on that first year’s team, KT’s team, that we were going to get it going. They could tell by the way we were coaching, the way we were recruiting, the way we were treating them. I so wanted KT’s team my first year to be a part of that foundation, to be a part of what was going to happen, and I didn’t think it was possible for them because we just weren’t talented enough.

That team came to Nashville and beat Mississippi State, beat Texas A&M, and beat LSU, three huge upsets, and then we played on the Saturday against Kentucky, a team that won the National Championship. We didn’t belong in any of those games. That first year team, KT Harrell’s team laid the groundwork for Auburn basketball in the future.

Q. Johni and Miles, just talk about the journey you guys have been on coming from other places and then thriving at Auburn.

JOHNI BROOME: My journey has been amazing. It’s been a long, fun ride. I started at Morehead State, Kentucky, a small city right next to Lexington, which I’ve kind of — it took two years to kind of find myself and develop my game and become who I am today.

A couple years ago, transferred over with the Auburn Tigers with Bruce Pearl and just kept trying to get better, kept growing my game. Right now I’m sitting at a podium at the Sweet 16 in Atlanta looking to advance.

MILES KELLY: For me, like Johni said, it’s been nothing but amazing. Did three years at Georgia Tech, so this is a full circle moment for me to be in March Madness Sweet 16, being able to have an opportunity to come back here to Atlanta and play in front of my family and stuff like that.

Just playing for BP and Auburn has been nothing but great for me. So I’m just super grateful.

Q. Johni, Dusty May said he recruited you hard at FAU. Do you remember that? How close was that to happening? Did you have a relationship with him?

JOHNI BROOME: Yeah, he did recruit me pretty hard. Somebody committed — I was going to come on a visit, but somebody committed the weekend before, so nothing ever happened after that. Yeah, they was recruiting me pretty hard, though.

Q. For all three players, what happened before the season that kind of brought this group together and helped you all prepare for what we’re seeing now today?

THE MODERATOR: Miles, why don’t you start.

MILES KELLY: For me, I can speak for me, I just looked at our roster before coming here. That was the biggest thing for me. I knew Auburn had a lot of great pieces coming back, and I felt like we could do something special like we’re doing now.

That was the deciding factor for me coming here. I knew that me coming here would just add another piece to this team and make us even more dangerous.

DYLAN CARDWELL: First and foremost, all glory to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

Everyone was just buying in off the bat. Bruce’s mandatory 9:00 a.m. breakfasts has kind of been our tradition for the past two years. But the difference in this year’s team is we have bible study at these breakfasts and just planting seeds for the Lord to have his way into our hearts. Learning sacrifice early on — sacrificing our time for the Lord, sacrificing our pride for each other, and these guys just bought in.

JOHNI BROOME: Kind of what Dylan said and what Miles said, before this year started, I think everybody kind of took a leap in their faith and kind of that’s on the court and off the court. Our brotherhood, our togetherness kind of all plays a hand in our bible study and things like that.

Also, as guys we bought in. We brought our core back last year. We won the SEC Championship. We had a good year, but we lost the first round.

Then we come and bring in guys like Miles, Tahaad, Turtle, Jahki, JP. You bring in good guys like that, and they just all came in looking to do whatever it takes to win, and it’s just paying off.

Q. Miles, obviously you’re returning to Atlanta and close to your previous school. How have you changed since leaving Tech, and how has it been adapting to a new role on your team?

MILES KELLY: I wouldn’t say I really changed for the most part. I’m still the same guy I was here, hard working, likes to get in the gym and stuff like that.

It’s just adapting to my new teammates and stuff like that. I think that’s the biggest difference from Georgia Tech and here, just learning how to play with new players and seeing where they’re comfortable on the court and stuff like that.

I wouldn’t say it was really a change but just learning how to adapt.

Q. Two questions so I don’t have to take too much time. One, the first question is what has the impact of NIL been on, not your individual careers, but do you think on college basketball as a whole? And the second question is, Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Broome, both of you brothers mentioned your love of the Lord. I’m seeing that more and more within college basketball, within sports. What do you attest that to?

DYLAN CARDWELL: I’ll answer the second one first. I believe that the Lord is just moving in the country. There have always been players that have been outspoken in their faith. I remember the person that kind of planted that seed for me when I was younger was Steph Curry. I wasn’t a Steph Curry fan at all, but just seeing him glorify the Lord in how he operates was something I always wanted to do. It helped me grow closer to God when I was a freshman in high school.

I think the country’s just learning that we can’t live life without him. We can’t do without him at all. The Lord allows us to have success, but we’re not praising the Lord just because we’re successful.

There’s just been many times that the Lord has kind of showed his hand. I’m not sure why there’s a resurgence in the athlete world. I can’t really answer that outside of saying the Lord is moving and having his way and using these athletes to be a vessel just to continue to spread who he is each day.

JOHNI BROOME: I would say kind of the same thing that Dylan said, but I’ll add a little bit more. I think it’s just more people are speaking out and sharing their beliefs and sharing the Word on the platform we’ve been given. I think it just opens the door for athletes who may have the same beliefs to kind of agree or to speak their heart and what’s on their their mind as well by seeing other big athletes like Steph Curry and people like that, I believe it just opens the door for everybody to do that.

DYLAN CARDWELL: Then to answer your NIL question, for me it’s been life changing. I think it’s been beneficial to every single person. Obviously you look at a person like Johni Broome who probably went to the league his first year at Auburn or second year at Auburn, the impact of NIL has allowed players to stay in college for longer, and it’s really been that tradeoff of do I want to risk going late first round or second round or do I want to come back to school and work on my game or work on those defects rather than going to the NBA where it’s a business, a cutthroat business, where you can’t afford that time really just to go in there unready.

So I think NIL is one of the best things that happened in college basketball history. I do think it needs to be a little bit more regulated. Other than that, I’m grateful for the opportunity. I’m grateful to be so blessed to be in a time as this when athletes can really just reap the benefits of the work we put in. So it’s rewarding.

Q. This one for Dylan and for Miles, obviously you guys got some roots in the greater Atlanta area. What’s it kind of meant, I guess for you two guys to be able to play close to where you all grew up and where you played so much ball?

MILES KELLY: For me, it means everything. When I was coming out of high school, that’s the reason why I chose Georgia Tech, to kind of stay close to my family. Then Auburn, coming here — Georgia, Atlanta, it’s only like an hour and a half away form Atlanta. This is a full circle moment for me to be in March Madness, Sweet 16, and come to Atlanta and play and have a chance to go to the Elite Eight in Atlanta and have a chance to go to the Final Four in Atlanta and stuff like that.

It’s just a blessing, and I’m super grateful for this opportunity.

DYLAN CARDWELL: I say the same thing. It’s a dream come true and full circle moment. I grew up watching the Hawks in Phillips Arena. It’s real fun to be in Atlanta. Shout out to McEachern High School. I don’t know what high school you went to, but McEachern is the best high school in all of Georgia, we got Sharife Cooper, Isaac Okoro.

MILES KELLY: No Dylan Cardwell?

DYLAN CARDWELL: No, I’m a humble guy. We got way more guys than that I’m just blanking on a few. We’re a football school, a basketball school, a track school, we’ve got everything 7A.

I love being in Atlanta, being in Georgia. It’s a great opportunity really just to show how great Georgia is as a state, I think one of the best states in the country.

Q. Johni, I believe the only two players in the history of sport with 2,600 points and 1,500 rebounds are Elvin Hayes and you. I know you can’t win games in the tournament without the other players and coaches, but as far as your individual legacy, do you think you’re one of the best players in the sport?

JOHNI BROOME: I’ll leave it up to everybody else to judge. I can’t speak on that. I’m still playing. I’m trying to win a game versus Michigan, and me and my teammates are trying to advance as far as we can and keep making history.

Q. Johni and Dylan, Coach Pearl said that he ran it by the players Saturday night before beginning his post-game with a political statement about the hostages being released. Did it surprise you that he came to you guys with that request, or are you accustomed to him having a political slant? And what interest in stating his political opinion from maybe the recent presidential election and other things?

DYLAN CARDWELL: I think Auburn University does a great job of allowing us to really just live as Americans, the first amendment, kind of the freedom of speech, Auburn gives us that platform to use our speech to really just show a passion about.

When George Floyd passed, Auburn gave us a platform for Black Lives Matter, and Bruce Pearl allowed the players to go out there and talk about things they’re passionate about. In the same way he has that same right to talk about stuff he’s passionate about. Obviously he’s Jewish, he is Israelan, and he is passionate about Israel.

He does have the right to obviously be an American and speak about what he’s passionate about regardless of what our views are. Comes across in a respectful but obviously compassionate way.

JOHNI BROOME: Kind of what Dylan said, you know like he said, he asked us. So he did it in a respectful way. That’s the type of guy he is. He has a strong belief in what he loves, but any day he still asked us to see how we felt about it. Like he said, we’re behind our coach and what he loves.

Q. For Johni and Dylan, a couple of 7-footers, I don’t know how many have ever played that pick-and-roll, pick and pop thing like Michigan does through their 7-footers. How do you deal with that? How difficult is it with two 7-footers and the way they use them?

DYLAN CARDWELL: It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be interesting and unique. I’m appreciative of going against two great guys, two NBA prospects as well. So just the opportunity to play against the field.

Johni and I play a lot of 2-on-2 in the summer really against A.D., against Chaney, Miles. We play against the whole team, and we didn’t lose a single game. We won every series. We’ve got pretty good chemistry, and we’re pretty confident in our skill set and stuff like that. It should be a fun matchup.

We’ve been playing 2-on-2 all summer to prepare for this moment. Miles Kelly can’t stick with us.

JOHNI BROOME: Like Dylan said, it’s going to be fun. You have to enjoy the moment. This is Sweet 16. We’re going up against two 7-footers. It’s going to be fun. Everybody in that locker room is looking forward to the matchup. Our front line is looking forward to the matchup. Yeah.

Q. Dylan, you have two championship rings from your time at Auburn.

DYLAN CARDWELL: Three.

Q. Three. Two regular season championship.

DYLAN CARDWELL: And one SEC Tournament.

Q. You’ve seen kind of the transformation of Coach Pearl taking advantage of the new rules and bringing in guys built like Johni and Miles and others. How different has that been, and what role have you played as the old man of the bunch and kind of accepted those guys into the fold and making them feel comfortable?

DYLAN CARDWELL: Bruce Pearl has recruited some great guys over the years that I’ve been here, but he stands on business when it comes to saying that he does recruit guys that are Auburn men, that are just going to come in and be guys that you love.

He’s got role guys in here. He’s got guys we need for scoring, for defense, for facilitating. The role I play, I try to be the glue. Shout out gorilla glue if you want an NIL deal. I’m super glue. I love Elmer’s, but I don’t know if Elmer’s got a super glue, so gorilla glue. I just try to hold it tight. Without that, you can’t glue things.

I just try to be the glue guy for this team. You really can’t go anywhere without the guy. It’s kind of just being here before, sharing my experience, but also trying to keep these guys level headed. We’re in the Sweet 16. We’re going to the Elite Eight. I haven’t been this far before, but I kind of just try to share my experience with them and realize it’s just a game, the game we love to play.