Auburn Men's Basketball Sanctioned by NCAA, Bruce Pearl Suspended

The NCAA has made its decision regarding a years-long investigation into the Auburn men's basketball program, levying a four-year probation period against the Tigers in which scholarship counts will be decreased by two among other punishments.

On top of scholarship limits, Auburn has been fined $5,000 and will lose 3% of its total budget for this season and head coach Bruce Pearl will serve a two-game suspension. No further postseason ban was implemented; however, likely due to the Tigers self-imposed ban in 2020.

In a statement on Friday, Pearl said, " I’m appreciative of Auburn University, our leadership, the AU family and our current and former student-athletes as we navigated through the challenges of the last four years," coach continued, "We respect the NCAA peer evaluation process and appreciate the panel recognized we took meaningful and contemporaneous penalties. It is time to put this behind us. As part of our penalty, I will begin my two-game suspension tomorrow against Nebraska."

The investigation stemmed from a 2017 incident in which former Tigers assistant coach, Chuck Person, was arrested and accused of giving financial benefits to players and their families. Person was swiftly fired from the University, but the investigation was ongoing.

According to the official NCAA report, Person accepted over $90,000 in bribes from a financial advisor in exchange for influencing student athletes and their families on top of providing financial benefits to two players and their families.

The full report from the NCAA can be found here.