There are a bunch of different ways to illustrate how great of a season Auburn is having. At this point, perhaps the best is to suggest that the Tigers are so far ahead of everybody else from a resume-perspective with eight days left in the regular season that they could literally lose every game they play between now and Selection Sunday and still be the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
That’s how great of a season Auburn is having.
The Tigers continued their incredible run through nearly everything and anything placed in front of them with a 94-78 win at Kentucky on Saturday that pushed them to 27-2 overall and 15-1 in the SEC. More importantly, Auburn is now 16-2 in Quadrant 1 with no additional losses.
College basketball scores, winners and losers: St. John’s, Auburn win conference titles as March gets underway
Kyle Boone
Now let’s put my suggestion to the test.
Auburn’s final two regular-season games are a Q1 game at Texas A&M on Tuesday and another Q1 game at home against Alabama on Saturday. Even if the Tigers lost both, they’d still be outright SEC champions and thus the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament. Then their first game in the SEC Tournament would be in the quarterfinals against the winner of what will likely be an 8-9 game. Barring a surprise, that would also be a Q1 game. So, follow me here, even if Auburn lost its final two regular-season games and its first game in the SEC Tournament, Bruce Pearl’s team would still likely be 27-5 overall with a 16-5 record in Q1. Again, that’s the worst-case scenario for Auburn. And, based on current projections, literally nobody would be able to exceed or even match it.
So, again, I’m ready to call it.
Auburn is now a lock to be the No. 1 overall in the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
To be clear, I neither expect Auburn to lose every remaining game before Selection Sunday nor am I certain Auburn will even lose again at all before Selection Sunday. My point is that we’ve reached the point where Auburn could take a three-game losing streak into Selection Sunday and still be the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. The only thing that could prevent it would be a serious injury to a star player — and, even then, it would be debatable given that Auburn played two NCAA Tournament teams earlier this season without star player Johni Broome and won those contests by an average of 12 points.
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