The finals seconds ran off the clock at Legacy Arena as Bruce Pearl walked to midcourt and shared a momentary exchange with Houston coach Kelvin Sampson.

It was 8:30 p.m. in Birmingham, and Auburn’s season was officially over. Less than 45 minutes after the Tigers’ 81-64 loss in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, Pearl was already making plans to figure out how to get back to this point and potentially get over the opening-weekend hump that his team has succumbed to in back-to-back seasons.

“I’m proud of them, but I also have a pretty high standard,” Pearl said. “And so, I’m grateful, and I want them to feel really good about the fact that they had a good year.… I’m proud of this team. But if you know me, I’m on to the next play. And I’ll be recruiting tonight.”

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Auburn’s 2022-23 season was, overall, another successful one for the program. The Tigers won 20 games for the fifth time in the last six years, earned an NCAA Tournament berth for the fourth time in the last five postseasons and advanced past the opening round for the fourth straight time under Pearl and 11th consecutive time overall.

It was also a season that at times felt underwhelming coming off the highs of last year’s historic campaign, when the Tigers climbed to No. 1 in the nation for the first time ever, went wire-to-wire atop the SEC and earned a two-seed in the NCAA Tournament. This year saw Auburn’s home winning streak come to an end, as well as its run of consecutive weeks ranked in the AP poll. It was a season marked by narrow losses and late-game struggles. Seven of the Tigers’ 13 losses were by five points or fewer, including six against teams that made the NCAA Tournament. Yet the Tigers still made it to the Round of 32, just as they did a year ago.

“There is so much potential in this team,” center Dylan Cardwell said. “We had the chemistry — we had so much potential we just never put it together. I don’t know what it was, I don’t know what we could’ve done differently.”

That is now on Pearl to figure out, as he turns the page to next season and how to not only sustain Auburn’s success but also help get the Tigers to the next level. Pearl has resurrected Auburn’s program over the last nine years while fundamentally elevating the expectations of the fanbase in the process.

“If it’s not broke don’t fix it,” Pearl said. “What we do works.”

But it could work better, and that’s the hope for Pearl and his staff, who will spend the next couple of weeks figuring out what next season’s roster will look like and what they need to do to rebuild it. Zep Jasper is the only player on the current roster who has exhausted his eligibility. Seniors Allen Flanigan and Jaylin Williams could still take advantage of their COVID year and return for a fifth season, but neither one of them was committal about their plans as of Saturday night.

A decision is looming for both of those starters, as well as others on Auburn’s roster, which — like any program — could see some attrition through the transfer portal. The Tigers had 12 scholarship players this year while fulfilling the last of their NCAA-sanctioned second scholarship reductions stemming from the 2017 investigation into the program.

They’ll be able to get back to 13 next season. As of now, should Flanigan and Williams move on — along with Jasper and senior reserve Stretch Akingbola — Auburn is set to have nine scholarship players: All-SEC selections Johni Broome and Wendell Green Jr., K.D. Johnson, Chris Moore, Tre Donaldson, Cardwell, Chance Westry and Yohan Traore, plus incoming 2023 signee Aden Holloway, a four-star point guard rated as the No. 27 player in the country.

How Pearl fills those remaining four spots — and any others that become available from other departures — will play out in the coming weeks and months, as the season concludes and players hit the transfer portal. One thing is for certain, at least: Pearl isn’t wasting any time getting back to work.

“On to the next play,” Broome said of Pearl’s postgame message in the locker room. “We have a good group. Everybody can come back but Zep, so hopefully we can make another run at it next year.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.