{"id":177508,"date":"2026-03-04T08:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T08:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/177508\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T08:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T08:13:13","slug":"joe-lunardi-shades-bruce-pearl-after-miami-oh-diss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/177508\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Lunardi shades Bruce Pearl after Miami (OH) diss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bruce Pearl stirred up a hornet\u2019s nest last weekend when he said the currently undefeated Miami (Ohio) RedHawks didn\u2019t deserve an at-large spot in the NCAA Tournament if they didn\u2019t end up winning their conference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMiami (Ohio), here\u2019s the deal,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/college-basketball\/bruce-pearl-questions-ncaa-tournament-miami-ohio-redhawks.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pearl said during a Big East college basketball studio show for TNT Sports<\/a>. \u201cAre we selecting the 68 most deserving teams? Or are we going to select the 68 best teams? If we\u2019re selecting the 68 best teams, then Miami (Ohio) is going to have to win their tournament to qualify as a champion. Because as an at-large, they are not one of the best teams in the country. And that\u2019s going to be a difficult choice for the committee to make.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/college-basketball\/bruce-pearl-miami-ohio-debate-auburn-nepotism.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wasn\u2019t lost on many people<\/a> that the Auburn Tigers, Pearl\u2019s former team and currently coached by his son, are on the bubble and could sure use a little help to secure their spot in the tournament. Still, even when challenged on his take, Pearl doubled down, <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/college-basketball\/miami-ohio-athletic-director-david-sayler-slams-bruce-pearl.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">earning the ire of Miami\u2019s AD<\/a>, amongst others.<\/p>\n<p>Longtime ESPN Bracketologist Joe Lunardi does not agree with Pearl\u2019s assessment of the situation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/espn\/feature\/story\/_\/page\/bracketology\/ncaa-bracketology-2026-march-madness-men-field-predictions\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">In his latest update<\/a>, Lunardi tries to tackle Pearl\u2019s concerns head-on and comes away convinced that there\u2019s no reasonable way to keep the RedHawks out and put the Tigers in, for now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI try to avoid debates without clear right or wrong answers, but Bruce Pearl\u2019s argument against Miami (Ohio) as an at-large team requires context,\u201d wrote Lunardi. \u201cFirst, high-major status aside, we have no idea whether Auburn is the better basketball team. Second, Miami has won\u00a0four more true road games than Auburn has\u00a0played, and road teams in men\u2019s college basketball win less than one-third of the time. Finally, in the modern history of the NCAA tournament, great mid-majors have won almost twice as many games as middling high-majors, despite fewer bids and weaker seeding.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, I suppose it\u2019s possible Miami is the worst undefeated team of all time, and Auburn is the best .500 team we\u2019ve ever seen \u2014 but it\u2019s way more likely Pearl would be better off leaving Bracketology to the professionals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lunardi currently has Miami in as an 11-seed, while Auburn (15-14) is among his First Four Out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Pearl stirred up a hornet\u2019s nest last weekend when he said the currently undefeated Miami (Ohio) RedHawks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[83928,2534,73640,82747,83929,123,125,124,29573],"class_list":["post-177508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-2026-ncaa-tournament","tag-auburn-tigers","tag-bracketology","tag-bruce-pearl","tag-joe-lunardi","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami-redhawks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}