Meet 30-year-old Auburn men’s basketball play caller who helped build nation’s No. 1 offense
By Brendan Marks
5h ago
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Mike Burgomaster was minding his own business when he heard the question that accidentally upended his life:
I’m going to see about becoming a basketball manager. Want to come?
It was fall 2012, early in Burgomaster’s freshman year at Miami. Despite having played basketball most of his formative years, not to mention his 6-foot-6 frame, Burgomaster had a different plan in South Florida: to earn a finance degree and follow in his father’s accounting footsteps.
But then Burgomaster’s floormate swung by his dorm and asked him to tag along.
His friend only lasted a week with the basketball program — but Burgomaster found his calling. His experiences the next four years recalibrated his career considerations, ultimately leading him where he is today: to Auburn’s bench, as one of Bruce Pearl’s trusted assistant coaches. Burgomaster, 30, serves as the Tigers “offensive coordinator,” calling 90 percent of the plays for the nation’s top-ranked offense.
“It’s crazy to think,” Burgomaster said in an interview with The Athletic, “but everything happens for a reason.”
Ahead of its Tuesday matchup at Texas, No. 2 Auburn leads the country in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom, a first in program history. Auburn’s 2019 Final Four team — which finished the season sixth in that same metric — had previously been the high-water mark of Pearl’s 11-year tenure on the Plains.
But Auburn isn’t just on the verge of school history; at its current pace, it’s threatening to make college hoops history. Auburn’s offensive rating of 130.5 — meaning the Tigers score 130.5 points per 100 possessions — is the best ever through KenPom’s 29 seasons of data. At least analytically speaking, these Tigers are up there with some of the best offenses of the past three decades: 1998 North Carolina, with Hall of Famers Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison; 1999 Duke, arguably the best team to never win a title; 2015 Wisconsin, which ended Kentucky’s undefeated season behind Wooden Award winner Frank Kaminsky; and UConn last season, the basketball equivalent of a buzz saw.
Burgomaster isn’t the sole reason Auburn is in that lofty position, but he has been integral to maximizing and updating Pearl’s longtime offense. Since Burgomaster was promoted to his current position in summer 2023, he’s helped turn center Johni Broome first into an All-American, and now into the Wooden Award front-runner. Tennessee might be the No. 1 team in the AP poll, and the last undefeated squad in Division I, but Auburn’s nation-leading four wins over teams ranked in the top 20 are proof these Tigers have a chance to win it all come March.
“I’m not letting him go,” Pearl said of Burgomaster. “He’s going to continue to have a dominant role on my staff.”
In Daniel Coyle’s “The Talent Code” — one of former Miami coach Jim Larrañaga’s favorite books — the author details the three things necessary for anyone to develop their talent, regardless of the field. The first step? Ignition.
“Something that motivates you to want to succeed,” Larrañaga said. “Mike’s time at Miami was his ignition.”
As a Massachusetts native, Burgomaster grew up a Boston Celtics fan and always loved the game but didn’t fully understand how he could parlay that into a profession. But his junior year, when Miami made the NIT title game, Burgomaster skipped a finance exam to attend.
“I wasn’t excused,” Burgomaster said. “I just wanted to travel to go be a part of that — and at that point, I was like, this is awesome. This is what I want to do.”
As a manager, what he didn’t know at the time was he was actually ticking off the second and third boxes on Coyle’s talent development checklist: access to master coaching and deep practice. Burgomaster combed game tape, cut clips and developed strategies for various opponents alongside UM’s assistant coaches, who would compile that information into scouting reports for the team. At Auburn, Burgomaster does mostly the same thing — only now he’s the one presenting to players.
“You must spend countless hours not just practicing, but practicing correctly,” Larrañaga said, “and I think that’s what Mike did.”
Near the end of Burgomaster’s senior year, he approached Larrañaga with his desire to get into coaching. One problem: Miami didn’t have any vacancies. “I was the kid at graduation where all my friends’ parents are like, ‘So what are you going to do?’” Burgomaster remembers. “I was like, I’m going to be a basketball coach — I just don’t know where.”
His lifeline came in the form of then-Miami assistant Adam Fisher, now the head coach at Temple, who knew one of Pearl’s then-assistants. A month after Burgomaster graduated, he and Pearl first connected and wound up talking for over an hour. A week later, Pearl hired Burgomaster as a graduate assistant, a job that typically goes to former players or a friend of a friend.
“Burgo had none of that, really,” Pearl said. “But when I met Mike, I liked him, and I thought his basketball IQ was higher for somebody his age. I don’t know. I saw something in him that made me say, this guy’s going to make us better.”
Burgomaster got the chance to prove that his second year on the Plains — or rather, he had to. Then-Auburn assistant Chuck Person was implicated in the FBI’s investigation into corruption in college basketball in September 2017, and the school fired him two months later. “Everyone in the program at the time just had to do more,” Burgomaster said — including him, the lowest man on the Tigers’ ladder. So, baptism by fire. His first real responsibility that preseason was running point on the scouting report for Division II Barry, Auburn’s preseason exhibition opponent — which wound up beating Auburn 100-95 in overtime.
“One of the things I always say about coach Pearl is, he has let me fail,” Burgomaster joked. “I still hear about it all the time.”
Burgomaster’s second shot at a true scout? Temple … which Auburn also lost to, the Tigers’ lone blemish amid their 16-1 start. As the season went on, though, Burgomaster — and Auburn — kept figuring things out. Even down two of their better players (who were also deemed ineligible that season in the wake of the FBI investigation), the Tigers went on to win the SEC regular season and make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 15 years.
For his efforts, Burgomaster was promoted after the season to assistant director of operations, his first full-time college basketball job.
He was still only 24.
Burgomaster is midway through his ninth season at Auburn, and people around the program attest to his offensive know-how long before he was officially the Tigers’ play caller. It has become increasingly common in recent seasons for teams to have offensive and defensive coordinators. Certain programs also have set play specialists, who oversee a team’s out-of-bounds plays, among other things.
“I could tell immediately,” fifth-year player Chris Moore said, “that he was the brains of the operation.”
Pearl’s offense has long been oriented around flex concepts: Basically, when a defender sets what looks like a cross screen just outside of the paint, allowing his teammate to cut untouched parallel to the baseline.
(Screenshot via Synergy)
“It’s a hard action to guard,” Burgomaster said, “and there’s a reason why people have been running it for years.”
Flex cuts are so difficult to defend for a few reasons. First, they sow miscommunication and confusion defensively; teams have to know their game plan on every single possession, especially if they’re switching the cutters (as Duke did successfully in Auburn’s lone loss this season) or not. But flex also creates mismatches and openings near the rim, which is its primary design. Against Memphis in the Maui Invitational championship game, watch how Auburn gets Broome an easy paint touch off a flex cut:
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