USATSI

Across the past 40 seasons, the No. 1 and No. 2 schools have met 17 times in the regular season. None of the teams that played in the previous 16 games wound up winning the national championship.

Bruce Pearl’s Auburn Tigers can buck the trend.

Because what happened Saturday at Coleman Coliseum — Auburn winning 94-85 against No. 2 Alabama with insistent style and impressive resourcefulness despite losing two key players to foul-outs — was more than just another impressive Quad 1 win.

Though, it was also that. The Tigers’ victory brought them to 14 Q1 dubs, which is six more than the trio of teams with eight apiece, all of them from the SEC: Alabama and Kentucky, which lost Saturday, and Tennessee (which nearly lost).

Auburn, comfortably the No. 1 overall seed in Saturday afternoon’s top-16 bracket reveal, is moving toward a plane of its own. This is the best version of the SEC we’ve ever seen. Auburn is simultaneously a major reason for that, while separating from its conference brethren in the process. 

If there was going to be real doubt about the nation’s best team in the nation’s best conference, Alabama needed to bring its best and provide room for skepticism on Saturday, given it had the benefit of hosting the Tigers in the pair’s first of two scheduled matchups (with more possibly to come in the postseason). 

Instead, the Tide were rolled following one of their worst 3-point showings of the season (5-of-26), a dismal display that doomed Nate Oats’ team en route to a first. Auburn became the first team to never trail at Alabama since Oats became coach six years ago.

“They’re the No. 1 team in the country for a reason,” Oats said. 

Oats’ team entered Saturday shooting 56% from the floor the previous three games. It was merely 38.6% against the Tigers. Mark Sears finished with 18 points, and his two second-half 3s were significant to get the game tied, but then the Tigers outscored the Crimson Tide 26-17 in the final eight minutes, carried by Johni Broome — who did so on a tender ankle, no less. 

At 22-3 and one month out from Selection Sunday, something special is starting to come into view here. Auburn is already shaping up as a great team in the context of this season. But if this continues, we’re going to have a whole new level of domination in play. It’s well on its way to having the best NCAA résumé of the NET era (which dates back seven seasons). Auburn needs four more Quad 1 wins to break Kansas’ record of 17 (from 2022-23), a record that seems destined to be broken. 

Saturday’s win also seemed to all but clinch Auburn’s fate of being the No. 1 overall seed 28 days from now, when the big bracket is revealed. It’s unthinkable how anyone will catch this team.

Only a couple more reasonable “ifs” away from all-time greatness.

If Auburn can get to the NCAA Tournament with, say, four or fewer losses. And if it can treat its March Madness foes the way it’s treated most of its opponents through the first three-plus months of the season, then Pearl could have a team fit for legendary status.

That’s what Saturday’s win was about. That’s how it recalibrated the Auburn story. It was the biggest game in the history of the SEC in the regular season, yet Alabama refused to bring the drama. 

Through 25 games, Auburn’s …

• Nine wins vs. ranked opponents are already three more than any other season in school history
• Four wins vs. top-10 opponents tie a program record
• Three wins vs. top-five opponents are the most in program history and the most in college basketball this season

The absurdity of it all: Auburn’s done this while playing the toughest schedule in the country. It’s 7-0 in SEC road games, against an SEC that could go down for having the greatest collective single-season performance in NCAA history. 

Adding to the legend is Broome, whose 19 points, 14 rebounds and six assists marked the fourth time this season the stellar senior has had at least 18 points, 14 rebounds and five assists in a game.

No one else has more than one.

That’s only a small reason why Broome is slightly ahead of Duke’s Cooper Flagg for national player of the year heading into the back half of February. 

The Tigers shouldn’t fall off. They were upset last weekend by Florida, a loss that Pearl told me woke this team up in the sense that they shouldn’t and won’t take pre-game prep haphazardly again. Auburn’s next three games are at home, all of them lined up to be Tigers victories, probably with some room to breathe in each: Arkansas, Georgia, Ole Miss. The first two are bubble teams whose fates could well be in the NIT. Ole Miss is capable but erratic. 

Auburn has looked like the No. 1 team in the country ever since its outstanding showing in Maui. I was there that week and wrote about the patented Maui Bump. This is more than just a bump — it’s a season-long boost that is zooming toward March and, after that, possibly college basketball history.