While college basketball has gone into its offseason, the Auburn Tigers have already begun to rebuild its roster for next season.
They have brought on six new players through the transfer portal and added three players in the 2025 recruiting class, a strong balance of recruiting that was essential to the fact that they lost their entire starting five and then some from their 2024 team, which made it to the Final Four before losing to the eventual National Champions, the Florida Gators.
Despite not really getting an offseason because of his focus on recruiting, head coach Bruce Pearl is excited about the prospects of next year already. He and the coaching staff have worked hard to fill nine of the 10 spots the team had to begin with.
“You know me, there hasn’t been an offseason yet. I’m not complaining. I feel good. I don’t feel too terribly tired. We had a long season and thank God we had a long season. We played all the way into April. I have never had to replace almost my entire roster before,” Pearl said. “We knew that this year — we knew last year had the chance to be a special team because we had a good team, a veteran team, and we decided to put a lot of eggs in that basket and see if we could make a run, and we did.”
With the majority of last years’ team graduating or in guard Chad Baker-Mazara’s situation, transferring, Pearl had to put together a whole new team.
Of note, the Tigers added forwards Elyjah Freeman, Keyshawn Hall and KeShawn Murphy and guard Kevin Overton through the portal, all of whom are rated as four-star transfers by On3.
There is still hope that guard Tahaad Pettiford, who is testing the draft waters, could return for his sophomore season. Pettiford, a difference-maker as the Tigers’ sixth man last year, will be the starting point guard should he return.
While the 2025-26 Auburn team will be very different than last year’s Final Four squad, Pearl’s efforts so far this offseason are keeping the Tigers as a contender.
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