Bruce Pearl calls out Auburn for not acting like #1 team in the country as Tigers suffer Gators upset: "We were due for a let down"

Despite being the ranked as the consensus No. 1-ranked team in the nation throughout the 2024-2025 season, the Auburn Tigers just suffered a rare loss. On Saturday, the Bruce Pearl-coached squad lost 90-81 to No. 6-ranked Florida Gators.

This was Tigers' second overall loss of the season, and their first in the SEC. Auburn's first defeat of the season come against the No. 2 Duke Blue Devils when they were dealt with a seven-marker loss, 84-78, in December 2024.

During the post-game press conference, Pearl was visibly distraught about how his team performed against the Gators. He said that his players didn't perform like a No. 1-ranked squad and called them out.

"We'll start off by congratulating Florida on a great victory, great game plan," Pearl said. "Being down (Alijah) Martin, they really rallied, and (Walter) Clayton was tremendous. Our game plan was to try and get the ball out of his hands, and after the first couple possessions, you would never know that was our gameplan. We did it first, then stopped doing it." [0:00]

"I kind of sense this was about to happen at any point. We have had greater effort energy or at least match the effort energy every team we played. I knew that we were due for a let down, give Florida the credit. If I would to redo a few things, I don't know that I made our team understand how important this was to Florida."

"If they lose this game, they're four games behind us in the league. Now they're just two and they're still in it (Final Four) ... We didn't look (and) act like the number one team in the country. We didn't prepare like it and as a result, we got beat," Pearl concluded.

The Tigers' next fixture will be against the Vanderbilt Commodores on the road on Tuesday.

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Bruce Pearl is embracing the grind if the Auburn Tigers aim to go far this season

Later on in the presser, Bruce Pearl shared his plans on preparing the Auburn Tigers for the upcoming slew of SEC games moving on from a tough home loss to the Florida Gators. To him, the work will just continue and he expects his players to follow suit.

"Practice at two o'clock tomorrow. They lift at one, I'll go home tonight, start working on a little bit of Vanderbilt, probably look at this (Florida) a little bit, and just keep doing what we do. You go to embrace the grind there's no question it's a grind. It's a grind for everyboy," Pearl shared. (1:44)

Pearl is yet to win the NCAA national championship in his almost 33-year college coaching career, 11 thus far in the Auburn program, which could be added fuel for him to rally his players this season.