Ten years is a long time to be at one job – especially as a coach in the SEC.

As of Tuesday, Auburn men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl has been around for 10 first days of practice on The Plains.

There was so much to be excited about Tuesday that a Chick-Fil-A lunch likely didn’t top Pearl’s list.

“What’s the best time for you, as a basketball coach?,” Pearl said, mimicking a question he often gets asked.

“And I’d say right now is about it… Today will be the first day of official practice, where, it used to be the old October 15 start date. But this is the best time of the year for us, because we’re trying to put together what we think we have.”

The NCAA nixed the Oct. 15 start date back in 2013, just before Pearl arrived at The Plains.

Pearl was asked to reflect back on his start in Auburn on Tuesday. He had to ask the reporter to repeat the question, blaming his worsening hearing.

But Pearl remembers what it was like 10 years ago when he took the job.

To put it bluntly, the Tigers weren’t very good on the basketball court as former coach Tony Barbee amassed a 49-75 over four seasons.

Meanwhile, Auburn’s football program was coming off a national championship run and was on a tear of consistent success.

The expectations were lofty when Pearl arrived.

“My goal in coming to Auburn was to get the basketball program up to the level of excellence that the rest of the sports programs enjoyed and the other parts of the university enjoyed,” Pearl said Tuesday. “So whatever that means.”

Considering the recent success of the football team — though it wasn’t explicitly stated – that meant competing for championships.

But that wasn’t going to happen overnight and Pearl’s first two seasons on The Plains were proof of that.

Over the course of the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons, Pearl and the Tigers went 26-40 and finished 13th in the SEC.

“I’m very proud of the fact that in our first two years where we were not successful — and we weren’t successful my first two years — there were moments,” Pearl said.

One of those moments was making the SEC Tournament semifinal, where as a 13 seed, Auburn knocked off 12th-seeded Mississippi State, 5th-seeded Texas A&M and 4th-seeded LSU before eventually losing to top-seeded Kentucky.

“Winning three games in Nashville was as important as anything we accomplished, because it set the tone,” Pearl said.

The Tigers still weren’t great in Pearl’s second year.

But for the first time in 18 years, the Tigers knocked off John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats in a 75-70 win at Neville Arena.

“We had a few moments,” Pearl said.

And it was those two seasons that set the foundation for the Pearl era at Auburn.

The Tigers’ roster was full of Pearl-recruited youth in year No. 3. But Auburn was still able to muster 18 wins.

“And then we kind of took off from there,” Pearl said of the 2016-17 season.

The following season, Pearl and the Tigers finished ranked the No. 19 team in the country and punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament, where they made a second-round exit.

The rebuild was one track and in the 2018-19 season, Auburn won the SEC championship and danced its way to the Final Four – something that Pearl still has to wrap his head around to this day.

“Did I expect to get to a Final Four?,” Pearl said. “You know, as a Division I head coach I had not been to a Final Four before. I won a national championship in Division II. I finished second one year. I went to a few Elite Eights. So that exceeded my expectations if I had an expectation.”

Now here we are – in Year 10 of the Bruce Pearl experiment, which we can safely call a success at this point.

And to think Pearl is satisfied to have a Final Four banner hanging on the exterior of Neville Arena would be selling him and the Tigers’ program short.

“Over the last six years, arguably, we’ve had the best program in the SEC,” Pearl said.

But Pearl and Auburn aren’t stopping at a six-year sample size.

“Our goal is to be able to come back next year and say, ‘Over the last seven years we’ve had the best program in the league.’,” Pearl said.

However, Pearl knows that won’t come easy.

“That’s going to be challenging because there are some people that are right behind us,” Pearl said. “Can we say next year that we’ve won more NCAA tournament games than anybody over the last seven years? That’s kind of what my goal is. That, obviously, and to compete for championships. So we’re excited to get started.”