'Some of our best friends': Bruce Pearl fantasy camp

'Some of our best friends': Bruce Pearl fantasy camp'Some of our best friends': Bruce Pearl fantasy camp
Wade Rackley

Jason Lee filled the box score with 12 points, six rebounds and four steals, but there's one more stat he might have picked up had this been reality and not fantasy: a technical foul.
 
Lee was one of two players on the Blue team wearing No. 34 in the Bruce Pearl Fantasy Camp game.
 
A former high school basketball player in Andalusia, Alabama, who still plays twice a week, Lee seemed unconcerned by the uniform duplication.
 
"That's because it's called a fantasy camp," Lee said. "You can do whatever you want."
 
For the fourth straight year, a Chad Prewett-coached team prevailed, with Blue beating White 26-25.
 
"I've been very fortunate to have some really good players," said Prewett, Auburn basketball's director of operations. "The last two years, it's come down to the last shot."
 
Forty campers attended, with 22 playing while the other 18 served as assistant coaches to Prewett and Wes Flanigan, who coached the White team while Auburn legend Marquis Daniels officiated.
 
"These guys are so important to our program," Prewett said.
 
Pearl joined former Auburn coach Sonny Smith and Brad Law, who recorded a brick-by-brick audio account of the competition.
 
"Some of the guys have played a little bit. They've got a little game, and some of the guys, you can tell, don't," Pearl joked.
 
"It is a group of some of our best friends," he said. "Guys who have loved Auburn basketball and always will. We bring them in and we get them behind the scenes and trust them and teach them. It's something we look forward to every year."
 
Just like Pearl's program, which won the SEC regular season championship and reached the NCAA Tournament last season for the first time in 15 years, the fantasy camp talent level is also trending up.
  
"I've been to every single Pearl camp and the first year I was here, the talent level was not that great, but every year it just gets better and better," said Bill Dykes, who grabbed three rebounds for the White team. "Now I can't play with these guys anymore."
 
Dykes, from Richmond, Virginia, attends Auburn's football and basketball fantasy camps annually.
 
"It's just fun," he said. "The coaching staff is fantastic. Coach Pearl, he's just a joy to be around. It's fun to get the inside scoops on what's going on with the team. Meeting and networking with all the other Auburn men is great."
 
The two-day camp included dinner at Bruce and Brandy Pearl's home and a round of golf with Auburn's coaching staff.
 
"It's a great group," Pearl said. "If anybody wants to get close to Auburn basketball, and understand what we do and how we do it, there's no better way than the fantasy camp."












 
 
 
 

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @jeff_shearer