11-03-2011 | COACH BRUCE PEARL TO SPEND SHABBAT AT 2011 COOPER INVITATIONAL

11-04-2011 | Coach Bruce Pearl to Spend Shabbat at 2011 Cooper Invitational

By Josh Kahane

Coach Bruce Pearl, former head coach of the University of Tennessee Volunteers, will be spending Shabbat with the Cooper Invitational.

Pearl began his collegiate coaching career at Southern Indiana, where he won a Division II national championship. From there, Coach Pearl became the head coach at the University Wisconsin at Milwaukee where he led the Panthers to the NCAA tournament and scored two upsets in three days over Alabama and Boston College en route to the Sweet Sixteen. In 2005 Coach Pearl was named head coach of the national powerhouse, University of Tennessee Volunteers.

In his five year tenure at Tennessee, Pearl recorded wins over the Kansas Jayhawks (when ranked No. 1); University of Memphis Tigers (when ranked No 1); Kentucky Wildcats (when ranked No 2); and Texas Longhorns (when ranked No 2). Coach Pearl led the Vols to three NCAA Sweet Sixteen appearances in four years and was the first coach in School history to lead the Vols to a national #1 ranking.

Among his many 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).

Pearl is top tier coach, a brilliant basketball strategist, an inspirational speaker, and a proud Jew. Pearl will be davening, eating Shabbat dinner, and giving a keynote speech to Tournament participants.