Bruce Pearl - Coaching Career

Coaching Career

Before coming to Tennessee, Pearl was the head coach at Milwaukee and, prior to that, at Southern Indiana, where he won a Division II national championship. He also served as an assistant coach at the University of Iowa under then-head coach Tom Davis.

Among his accolades, Pearl is the second-fastest NCAA coach to reach 300 victories, and needed only 382 games to reach this mark (Roy Williams, the current coach at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, needed 370 games at the University of Kansas to reach this milestone). It should be noted, however, that all of Williams' victories came at the Division I level, whereas a portion of Pearl's victories came in Division II, and contributed to his rise to the Division I ranks.

Against division rival Kentucky and in-state rival Vanderbilt, Pearl chooses to wear a brightly colored orange jacket in honor of the late UT coach, Ray Mears. To show the importance of the game, Pearl wore the jacket during the 2009 SEC Men's Tournament Final.

Pearl is president of the Jewish Coaches Association.