Auburn Won't Rush Owen Freeman Back — but Steven Pearl Likes What He Saw on the Floor

Auburn does not need Owen Freeman to be ready for an exhibition game in October. Auburn needs Owen Freeman to be the back-to-the-basket scorer it went into the transfer portal specifically to find — in February, in March, when SEC frontcourts start leaning on people. That is the lens for everything head coach Steven Pearl said in Birmingham on Tuesday, and honestly, it is a pretty sensible lens.

Speaking at SEC Tipoff on October 13, Pearl gave the clearest update yet on Freeman, the 6-foot-10 forward whose foot injury has limited him throughout the offseason. As reported by the Montgomery Advertiser, Freeman is progressing nicely: a day or two earlier he completed a 45-minute workout on the floor, his legs looked good, he was moving with bounce, and the foot is in a good place. And then Pearl said the part that matters most — Auburn is not going to rush him back.

The Plan, Step by Step

The roadmap Pearl described to the Montgomery Advertiser is methodical, and deliberately so. When head athletic trainer Clark Pearson and the team's doctors clear Freeman at 100 percent, he will move into full-contact practice. After that comes game action on a minutes restriction through the first couple of games. No dates were circled, no exhibition appearances were promised, and with Auburn's first exhibition arriving the very next day and the regular season tipping off in less than a month, the message was unmistakable: the calendar does not get a vote. The foot does.

That patience tracks with how this has been handled all fall. 247Sports reported at the start of preseason practice that Freeman would continue to be held out while progressing on schedule, with the staff expecting a return before the season began but refusing to force full weight-bearing work before he was ready. Two checkpoints, weeks apart, same story from Pearl: progressing, on schedule, not yet. Consistency like that is usually a good sign — it means the plan has not had to change.

Why Auburn Recruited This Specific Player

Freeman was not a portal flier. Pearl told reporters at SEC Tipoff that recruiting him was intentional, because of one specific skill: Freeman can genuinely score with his back to the basket, and Auburn has a lot of built offense for a big man who can do exactly that. In an era when college frontcourts increasingly live on the perimeter, a true post scorer changes the geometry of a half-court offense — he pulls a second defender into the paint, he manufactures free throws, and he gives a young team a place to throw the ball when a possession breaks down late in the clock. That is the dimension Pearl said Freeman adds to Auburn's frontcourt, and it is not a dimension you can fake with a healthier but different player.

It also explains the risk Auburn accepted. Freeman arrives with one season of eligibility remaining and an injury file that is, charitably, well-thumbed. The Tigers knew all of that when they recruited him. They decided the Iowa version of Owen Freeman was worth the medical patience. So let us talk about the Iowa version.

The Player Auburn Is Waiting For

At Iowa, Freeman was a star in the making. He was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year for 2023-24, averaging 10.6 points, 6.6 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game. His sophomore season was better still — 16.7 points and 6.7 rebounds a night — the profile of a big man ascending toward all-conference territory. Then came the transfer to Creighton, and a year that never got started: injuries limited him to 26 games with only nine starts, 11.9 minutes a night, five points and four rebounds per game. Same player, same skills, completely different season.

That split is the entire Auburn bet in one paragraph. If the Tigers get anything close to the sophomore-year Hawkeye — efficient post scoring, rim protection, real rebounding — Freeman is not a rotation piece, he is a foundational one. If the injuries keep nibbling, he is a what-if. There is no middle outcome, which is precisely why the staff's refusal to rush him makes sense. A minutes-restricted Freeman in November who is fully himself by January is worth infinitely more than a Freeman rushed into an October exhibition who aggravates the foot and disappears again.

Depth Buys the Patience

It helps that Auburn, unlike last season, can afford to wait. Pearl spent part of his SEC Tipoff appearance talking about a roster he believes runs far deeper than the one that struggled through stretches of last year with barely enough healthy rotation players to practice properly. That depth is the quiet enabler of this whole plan: Freeman can be brought along at the speed of his recovery instead of the speed of Auburn's needs, and the Tigers can use the early schedule — exhibitions, buy games, the first few weeks — to sort out the frontcourt rotation around the expectation that their most intentional recruit will join it, not carry it from day one.

The flip side is real, too. Chemistry with a post hub takes reps, and Freeman has had almost none with this team at full contact. Every week of the ramp-up that spills into the season is a week of on-court learning happening in games that count, on a minutes leash. Pearl knows it. The staff knows it. They are clearly choosing that cost over the alternative, and given Freeman's history, it is hard to argue they are wrong.

What to Watch Next

The next update will tell us more than this one did. Watch for two milestones: first, Freeman appearing in full-contact practice, which signals the medical staff has signed off at 100 percent; second, his name on the available list for an early-season game, even in a limited role. Until then, Auburn's exhibition slate and its fast-approaching opener go on without the player who might define its frontcourt — a strange sentence for a team's most coveted portal addition, but a true one.

For Pearl, the quote that will define this decision is the simplest one: they are not going to rush him. In a sport that rushes everybody, all the time, that restraint is either going to look wise in March or it is going to be second-guessed every time Auburn loses a close one in November. That is coaching. The foot, as always, will have the final say.

More college hoops and everything else from SEC country lives on our Sports front. For today's other reads, see the Knicks' preseason struggles against Minnesota and tonight's Warriors-Lakers matchup in Las Vegas.