Pearl very impressed with coach Harsin

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Bruce Pearl very impressed with Auburn coach Bryan Harsin

ByNick Kosko

3-4 minutes

First impressions are everything, or is it “aren’t everything?” In any event, Auburn might have the right man in place for the football program with former coach Bryan Harsin running the show.

So much so, basketball coach Bruce Pearl came away very impressed. With Pearl’s success on the basketball court, he knows a winner when he sees one.

Speaking on social media, Pearl revealed how impressed he was with Harsin’s preparation with the football team.

“You wanna talk about attention to detail..I was so impressed with the effort, focus and process. Thanks for the invite Hars @AuburnTigers,” Pearl tweeted.

Speaking on a March edition of The Roundtable on WJOX, college football radio host Paul Finebaum outlined why Auburn is the offseason winner with Harsin.

“You always hear the phrase, ‘you have to win the press conference,’ Finebaum said. “And that’s overrated because we all know the next day, it doesn’t matter. But Bryan Harsin has won the offseason. Even without having a great National Signing Day. He has done a really good job in interviews. I thought Saturday (to open practice) was the best move he’s made. He’s trying to create the family atmosphere for a guy that grew up nowhere near the family. And I think that’s really smart. I’ve interviewed him a couple of times. He’s not a guy that just blows you away with charisma.

“But he’s got a quiet charm to him that I really like. The Auburn fans are all buying in. He’s also being helped by the fact that the expectations are just not that high. He can have a seven- or eight-win season and nobody other than (cohost Lance Taylor) is going to talk about him being on the hot seat.”

There’s reason to be excited, particularly on the offensive side of the ball with Harsin and offensive coordinator Mike Bobo. Also, quarterback Bo Nix might need a jumpstart after having a bit of a sophomore slump in 2020.

"Oh yeah," Harsin said of Bobo last month "We’re on the same page."

Right now, Nix is running the offense well under center, and the other quarterbacks have some tightening up to do. Freshman Dematrius Davis fumbled an under-center snap exchange during an 11-on-11 period of practice that turned the ball over to the defense, for example.

"Mechanically, right now just as far as the operation of it, we’re not to the standard of where we want to be," Harsin said. "Bo’s done a good job with that. The other guys, we've got improve. You saw today, just that quarterback-center exchange, right, that’s a big deal when you get under center. ... We’ve got to be able to clean that up and operate a snap from the center to the quarterback. It just takes reps. But after a while that’s got to be something that we can do. We have to focus on we can just do it. That becomes something that’s second nature to us. We’re just not there yet."