Bruce Pearl Eyes Returning to Coaching Once NCAA Decides on Punishment

After getting fired in March for lying to NCAA officials, former Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl says he thinks he'll have the chance to coach again.

In his first interview since getting fired shortly after getting trounced out of the NCAA tournament with a 30-point loss to Michigan, Pearl told 790 The Zone in Atlanta that he believes that if he told the truth from the beginning, he'd still be coaching the Volunteers.

"I think there was some decisions that we made. Specifically, in my visit with the enforcement staff. I answered about 150 questions. I answered 148 of them honestly. There were two questions that I did not answer honestly. Had I answered those two questions knowingly, willingly, honestly, instead of a week later asking them to come back because I knew I had made a mistake … you guys would be interviewing the coach at Tennessee."

Pearl seems to have trouble dealing with the fact that he handled the situation so poorly.

"Do you want me to write the book about how do you lose $10 million jobs? I can write the book. How can you be so dumb and so careless? … It's not so much about what we did, it's about how we handled it."

In May, rumors spread that Pearl would return to coaching, but not at the college level, but rather the NBDL's Maine Red Claws.

Pearl is still awaiting final punishment from the NCAA, and says that decision will be a major factor as to when and where he will coach again.

"I've got to wait and see what the Committee on Infractions, what they say, probably coming up sometime in the middle of August and how quickly will they allow me to come back into coaching. That's going to go a long way towards whether or not I do coach again."