Auburn basketball coach says call to free Edan Alexander about ‘survival,’ not politics

ATLANTA — Auburn coach Bruce Pearl says he wasn’t mixing politics with sports last week when he called for the release of an American hostage in Gaza.

“It’s not political. It’s survival,” Pearl tells The Associated Press on Thursday following his news conference ahead of No. 1 seed Auburn’s NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 game against No. 6 Michigan on Friday night.

After Auburn’s 82-70 second-round win over Creighton on Saturday night in Lexington, Kentucky, Pearl opened his postgame news conference by calling for the release of Edan Alexander, the last living American being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas.

Pearl, who is Jewish, says he received approval from his players to address the issue last week.

“First of all, number one I don’t want to take away from Auburn,” Pearl says. “I don’t take away from the student-athletes and so I asked their permission if I could start that press conference and mention the name Edan Alexander. And they understood. And it didn’t.”

Pearl says it was a rare request.

“I really hadn’t done that on the podium since maybe two or three years ago when Israel and Iran were in an entanglement,” he says.