Bruce Pearl has reached orange and blue immortality on the plains.

Auburn’s 64-year-old head coach now stands alone as the all-time winningest men’s basketball coach in Auburn history, passing Joel Eaves, who led the program from 1949-1963.

The illustrious 214 wins come after 10 and a half seasons, five NCAA tournament appearances, two SEC regular season championships, two SEC tournament championships and one Final Four. That’s without mentioning that the team who got him to the mark on Tuesday might be his best yet.

Auburn beat Texas 87-82 Tuesday night, improving to 14-1, ranking No. 2 in the country and continuing to look like a title contender.

It’s a team filled with former JUCO, Division II and mid-major transfers, a group only fitting for a man whose athletic career was cut short by injuries in high school and spent nine years coaching Division II basketball before taking his first Division I head coaching job.

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You could use many different terms to describe the Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles men’s basketball teams of the 1990s. Exciting, talented, well-supported, together, the list goes on. The first word that will come to the minds of many who were around the program at the time would likely be: Winners.

The Screaming Eagles went 231-46 from 1992-2001, arguably the most successful period in the program’s history and the nine-year stretch where a young Pearl got his introduction to being a head coach.

It didn’t take long for him to figure it out either.

After finishing 22-7 and making the NCAA Division II Tournament in his first season, Pearl quickly led USI to a national runner-up finish in 1994 and a Division II National Championship in 1995, the first and only in the program’s history.

“He just had a way of us all getting on the same page very quickly,” said Stan Gouard, USI’s current head coach and one of Pearl’s star players from 1993-1996. “He allowed us to be us and no one else. But at the same time, the most important thing was trying to chase the common goal of winning.”

Pearl inherited a USI program that had experienced spurts of success in its 22-year history, but it was rarely maintained for more than a couple seasons and never turned into any championships.

It was an opportunity to prove himself as a head coach at a lower level than he was used to, coming from assistant coaching spells under Tom Davis at Boston College, Stanford and Iowa.

To say Pearl proved himself would be an understatement, leaving USI as the school’s all-time winningest head coach, a mark that stood until 2019.

Fast forward 22 years from when Pearl first arrived in Evansville, a new program building challenge and opportunity to reinvent himself stood before him.

When Pearl accepted the Auburn head coaching job, the Tigers had a record of 64-92 over the previous five seasons and hadn’t made the NCAA tournament in 11 years.

At the time, Pearl’s image wasn’t quite what it used to be either. Taking over at Auburn was somewhat of a second chance at coaching for Pearl, whose time at Tennessee ended with a recruiting scandal that led to a three-year show cause from the NCAA, keeping him out of the business for an extended period of time.

“It’s been a long three years being away from the game,” Pearl said at his introductory news conference in 2014. “I have found this part of the country to be a part of the country that offers grace. And but for the grace of God, I would not be standing here today as your next men’s basketball coach and I’m truly grateful.”

With that gratitude, Pearl not only turned the program’s results around, but his charisma, personality and relatability turned him into a local icon and made basketball important again at Auburn.

Ten years on from Pearl’s first day on the plains and Neville Arena is known as one of the biggest homecourt advantages in college basketball and rarely has an empty seat.

“It sends a message, I guess, around the world of college basketball that basketball matters in Auburn,” Pearl said during the Tipoff at Toomer’s preseason event prior to the 2024-2025 season. “Who puts a court down the middle of downtown, brings in Cole Swindell, gets 10,000 people to show up on a beautiful fall night? Auburn, Alabama, does.”

How Pearl was described at USI isn’t too different than the adjectives many use to describe him in Auburn.

In the May 5, 1992, edition of the Evansville Press –- the day Pearl first met with reporters after taking the USI job –- the then 32-year-old rookie head coach was characterized as “a smooth talker,” “funny,” and “seems to be able to get along with most anybody.”

“His personality, of course, won me over from Day 1,” Gouard said. “Just made me feel like I could do anything, just based on a simple conversation or motivational factor.”

Gouard was one of Pearl’s first big recruits as a head coach, bringing him to Division II USI over a handful of Division I schools. Along with Pearl’s personality, the relationships Pearl built with Gouard’s friends and family members convinced the Danville, Illinois, native to join the young head coach at USI.

Pearl’s words and motivation seemed to work. Three seasons, two NABC Division II Player of the Year awards and one national championship later, Gouard was known as one of the greatest players in USI history and was ready to pivot toward Pearl’s line of work.

“I tell him all the time to this day, the reason I’m coaching is because the way he treated and motivated me as a person, and he shaped my life to be the person I am today,” Gouard said.

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Almost 30 years on from when Gouard told Pearl he wanted to coach –- a conversation that occurred on the way home from the national championship –- a shirtless Dylan Cardwell sat in the Neville Arena media room.

Cardwell, a fifth-year senior, has been with Pearl for 102 of his 214 wins at Auburn, and was quick to fire off a joke about his impact on Pearl’s success.

“It means the world to have that opportunity — an opportunity to be part of history. Saying that I helped Coach Pearl win the majority of his games,” Cardwell said while laughing.

If Pearl’s charisma and animated personality has rubbed off on anyone at Auburn, it’s Cardwell. The 6-foot-11, 255-pound center is known for his showmanship and energy on the court just as much as his impact on the games themselves.

He carries a large personality that Pearl doesn’t try to suppress or change, making Cardwell one of the program’s cornerstones over the past five years, despite not having All-SEC or All-American caliber numbers.

“It means so much to me to have a part of something so special. Coach Pearl means the world to me,” Cardwell said. “I’m grateful he’s an Auburn guy. He transformed Auburn basketball, for sure.”

Star center Johni Broome was another player who spoke about Pearl on Monday, saying that while Pearl may try and downplay it, putting their coach in the record books is important to the team.

Pearl did downplay the milestone when asked about tying the record after Auburn’s win over Missouri but admitted that he’ll celebrate it when the time is right.

“I will celebrate whatever we accomplish this year this summer. I’ll celebrate with my friends, my family, the Auburn Family, on the boat at Lake Martin out there on a golf course. Nobody will enjoy it more,” Pearl said. “But you know me, you have to know I’m on to Texas and on to the next one.”

There’s little doubt that the milestone means something to Pearl. He’s the type of coach to study history and keep up with records, being the first to tell reporters before Auburn’s non-conference finale that a win would give his team the best non-conference record in the SEC over the previous nine years.

Despite that, it’s clear his bigger goal is reaching the one mark he achieved at USI that he hasn’t yet captured at Auburn: Winning a national championship.

This season might be his best chance to do it. But until then, he can fall back on being the most prolific winner in Auburn men’s basketball history.

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m