As double doors opened to a seventh-floor meeting room at The Westin Tampa Bay, coaches from Auburn filed in to watch preliminary games of the SEC tournament on a wide-screen TV. Massive windows overlooking the bay at sunset made it quite the scenic spot for scouting.

“What a view!” said one staffer.

The view of Auburn basketball certainly has improved. A Final Four breakthrough in 2019, sharing the conference championship a year later, and now a record 27 regular-season wins for what is only the program’s third outright SEC title in 91 seasons. The Tigers spent three weeks ranked No. 1, their first taste of the AP’s top spot, and nine consecutive weeks among the top five.

Did the 2014 version of Bruce Pearl — hungry to reboot his coaching career after an NCAA violation foiled his tenure at Tennessee — envision tradition-poor Auburn turning into this?

“You’re talking about a school that competes with Alabama and Georgia for national championships in football,” he recalled this week. “But the fact they hadn’t done it in men’s basketball in a long time made it more appealing. If we could go there and win, it would be wonderful.”

On Sunday night they received the Midwest Regional’s No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

The view is particularly gratifying for three Auburn alumni on Pearl’s staff — assistant coach Wes Flanigan, director of player development Marquis Daniels and graduate assistant KT Harrell — guys who played during three separate decades and stayed connected with the school even when its basketball program floundered.

“All three were leaders in different ways during different eras here,” said Chad Prewett, the chief of staff who has been with Pearl throughout all eight seasons at Auburn. “They’re so important to what’s happening here with our players. All three of them are true Auburn men.”