Bruce Pearl to coach against former assistant as Auburn and Iowa clash

After a 20-12 campaign, Bruce Pearl has his Auburn Tigers in the NCAA Tournament and there's a familiar foe on the other side of the first-round matchup, at least for Pearl.

Auburn, the No. 9 seed, will play the No. 8-seeded Iowa Hawkeyes. Notably, Iowa assistant coach Matt Gatens was an assistant coach for Pearl at Auburn from 2017 to 2019. There's some familiarity there, of course, but Pearl doesn't think Gatens' knowledge of his old boss as well as the Tigers program as a whole is going to give Iowa an advantage

"Matt Gatens, who played for the Hawks—whose dad, Mike Gatens, was one of my best friends in Iowa City, who also played for the Hawks under Lute Olson—was on our staff. So I’ve already texted Matt and told him I’ve changed all the play-calls, and I’ve changed all my signals, and we’re not running that anymore, and stuff like that," Pearl told the media, per AL.com.

Joking or not, one has to imagine that Pearl will keep an eye on his old assistant coach. Pearl may have changed the signals but an old coach's tendencies don't go away quickly—old dogs, new tricks as they say. It will be interesting to see if Gatens' spot on the Hawkeyes' bench does give Iowa any advantage in this matchup.

If not that, Iowa senior guard Connor McCaffery thinks the venue will play in his team's favor. The two teams are playing in the Midwest Region, which means this first-round contest will be played in Birmingham, Ala.,—which is somewhat hostile territory for the Tigers.

“What you’ve got to know is we’re playing in Birmingham and Alabama’s there, so they’re going to be rooting for us. Because they hate Auburn," McCaffrey said, according to Mike Hlas.

Here's one more tie in this game: Keep in mind, Pearl was an assistant coach at Iowa from 1986–1992.