Auburn basketball under Bruce Pearl has not shied away from weird road games. Auburn plays another one of them Sunday when it goes up in the mountains to Boone, North Carolina, to play a true road game against Appalachian State.

Tip-off is scheduled for noon and the game will be aired on ESPN2.

But why is Auburn playing this game?

First, it’s the return leg of a home-and-home against the Mountaineers. Auburn played Appalachian State during the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic season and won 67-53 at Neville Arena.

Making road trips like this one fits in with a pattern of scheduling during Pearl’s tenure. Already this year, Auburn played a neutral site game in South Dakota against Baylor. It will play UNC Asheville in Huntsville, Alabama, later this year. Last season, Auburn made a west coast swing to play USC and Washington in true road games. In the 2021-22 season, it played true road games at Saint Louis and USF. It won by one point playing South Alabama in Mobile in the 2019-20 season.

Pearl’s consistency in scheduling home-homes with top mid-major programs comes from lessons he learned as he worked his way up the coaching ranks, he said during a press conference Friday.

“Obviously, I’ve got a history of playing in these games, going back to my days at Tennessee as well as here at Auburn,” Pearl said. “The history behind that is probably more of having been at Iowa and seeing Tom Davis play Northern Iowa at Northern Iowa once in a while, you know? And then having gone to Southern Indiana myself as a Division II program, that was at a time when you could play a D-II in the regular season, but there weren’t any of these preseason opportunities. And I just couldn’t get a game. We were good. Nobody in Indiana would play us. Then, when I went to Milwaukee, I inherited a contract where Wisconsin actually sort of played a 3-for-1. They came to Milwaukee one time when I was there, and I really appreciated that. I just said that whenever I got my opportunity to be a coach at the high-major level, I’m going to do that. That’s sort of what got it started.”

Appalachian State is 5-2 so far this season and ranked 93rd overall in the KenPom ratings system. Appalachian State is a solid defensive team with wins over Murray State and UNC Wilmington. UNC Wilmington beat Kentucky at Rupp Arena on Saturday.

Auburn, now 5-1 and ranked No. 13 in KenPom, has not yet played a true road game. This is Auburn’s only true road game of the non-conference slate and won’t play another one until it opens SEC play against Arkansas on Jan. 6 at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.

So Pearl hopes this will give a new-look Auburn team at least a preview of playing on the road before it gets stronger tests in SEC play.

“That’s why we scheduled it, to have that test and have that environment,” Pearl said. “And obviously, what it’ll do is it’ll really elevate the level of Appalachian State’s play. They’re really athletic. Again, they’ve got great size. They’ll be jacked up. And we’ve got to be able to handle their elevated play, and at the same time, not let the environment disrupt our play.”

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]