AUBURN, Ala. – General manager Brian Kloman joined the Auburn men’s basketball program as the Tigers advanced to the NIT Final Four.
Indianapolis was the perfect place for Kloman to dive into his new job, with agents aplenty in town for the NIT and NCAA championships.
“Trying to put together the best team we possibly can for the Auburn faithful,” Kloman told Andy Burcham on the Talking Tigers podcast. “The coaches were wearing two hats for sure.”
Two days after Auburn defeated Tulsa to win the NIT championship, Kevin Overton announced he would be back for the 2026-27 season. Tahaad Pettiford followed soon after.
“Not many people can return a backcourt as talented as those two,” Kloman said. "Once KO came back and Tahaad came back, it made everything easier. We’re in good hands with those guys as our leaders.”
On the morning Kloman visited with Burcham in Auburn’s brand lab, he’d already made 25 calls. A day in the life of a relatively new position in college basketball, a result of the arrival of the NIL and revenue share eras.
“Anything I can do to make their lives easier,” Kloman said of his quest to assist head coach Steven Pearl and the Tigers’ assistants.
The son of a college basketball coach, Kloman grew up in Ashville, North Carolina, and was a student assistant and support staffer at Tennessee, where his dad was on the coaching staff for eight seasons prior to Bruce Pearl’s arrival in 2005. After BP arrived, he thanked the former coaching staff for helping build the program.
“I’d never seen anything like that,” said Kloman, whose Tennessee roommates, Dane Bradshaw and Chris Lofton, later told him how much they enjoyed the camaraderie that Bruce Pearl developed.
Twenty-one years, Steven Pearl invited Kloman, then the GM at Louisville, to come to the Plains.
“It was awesome to get a call from him,” Kloman said. “It was something I’d been thinking about for a long time.”
Like Steven Pearl, growing up around the game made Kloman want to pursue a career in basketball.
“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if it wasn’t basketball,” Kloman said. “Basketball has always driven me. It was always in my blood.”
Kloman paid his dues, coaching eight years at the Division-II, D-III and NAIA levels before founding a recruiting service that proved instrumental in his ascension to D-I.
“The more people you help, the farther you end up getting in life,” Kloman said. “I’ve always lived by that.”
One of the people Kloman helped was Pat Kelsey, then the associate head coach Xavier. After Kloman landed D-I assistant coaching jobs at NC Central and Tennessee Tech, he joined Kelsey at Winthrop when the latter accepted his first head coaching opportunity.
For the next 13 years, from Winthrop to College of Charleston to Louisville, where they quickly returned the Cardinals to prominence, Kloman was Kelsey’s right-hand man.
“That’s like my best friend and brother,” Kloman said. “Then I got a call to be part of the best staff in the country at Auburn. You can’t find a better staff in the country, not only as people, but in terms of what they’ve accomplished: two Final Fours, NBA player after NBA player who wasn’t highly rated. It’s been an awesome time since I’ve been here.”
Beginning at Winthrop, Kloman developed a knack for recruiting international players. Back then, only a few programs pursued players around the globe. Now, most high majors recruit internationally.
“The international world has changed a lot but I’m really confident in the relationships I’ve been able to amass over the last few years,” he said. “We’re not going to leave any rock unturned to give Auburn the best chance to win we possibly can.”
Auburn, says Kloman, offers much to players who grew up elsewhere.
“This is an international haven,” Kloman said. “They want safety, they want good people. I think there’s a whole niche here that international kids are going to love this community.”
While his primary role is to help Auburn assemble the most talented roster possible, that’s only part of the winning formula. The rest begins to take place during early morning summer conditioning.
“If you don’t love each other, it doesn’t matter,” Kloman said. “We’re putting ourselves in hard positions and figuring it out together.”
Kloman calls it “winning the margins,” finding ways to separate Auburn from its SEC competitors in a league where everyone invests in building talented teams.
“We have to be elite in the margins, the blocked shots, the turnover percentage,” he said. “The way you do that is you get longer, you get more athletic. We’re trying to combine the margins with the skill, then we’ve got something really special.”
On Father’s Day, Bruce Pearl texted Auburn’s coaching staff with a reminder that even in the new era, relational still triumphs over transactional.
“Spending time with these guys is the key,” Kloman said. “It’s old school Don’t forget they need us.
“The people who bring themselves together the fastest, sacrifice, learn each other and accept each other are the ones that in January and February, it’s going to mean more. Can’t let your buddy down. That’s where we’re going to get. Once you can’t let your buddy down, it’s on. It’s fun.”
Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on X: @jeff_shearer