Auburn men’s basketball is one of the latest programs to add a general manager to its staff, but the Tigers took a slightly different approach in selecting their GM.

The program hired Matt Gatens, who spent the last three seasons as the associate head coach at Iowa and was an assistant under Bruce Pearl at Auburn from 2016-2018. Gatens doesn’t have an NBA or personnel background like some other college basketball GMs, but he’ll still take over many of the typical GM tasks.

“What we’ll kind of do with Matt is bring him along in some of the things that we were doing in the NIL space, in the revenue sharing space, from a donor relations perspective, and just kind of help bring him in to kind of help us in those areas,” associate head coach Steven Pearl told reporters Tuesday.

Pearl added that he and former assistant coach Chad Prewett handled most of those duties before, with Gatens taking some of that load off the coaching staff.

In the press release from Auburn announcing the hire of Gatens, the school said that he will be responsible for roster management and evaluation, agent and donor relations, scouting, recruiting and game planning as Auburn’s general manager.

According to his bio on the Iowa men’s basketball website, Gatens assisted “in all aspects of the program, including recruiting, opponent scouting, practices, player development and game preparation” while with the Hawkeyes.

His role at Auburn will be a new one for him, but one that is increasingly necessary in the modern age of college basketball.

“He’s not your typical GM that you’re going to see from other schools bringing in from like NBA clubs and stuff like that,” Pearl said. “But we have a ton of support in Auburn and other areas where he, plus our administration, can figure out the best avenues forward in this space.”

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