The Stretch 4: Auburn had to move on to a top-15 Arkansas in a hurry
There was absolutely no time to dwell on the Texas A&M heartbreak. The Tigers will have their hands full Saturday to avoid an 0-3 SEC start.
AUBURN — Earlier this week, Auburn basketball went through a wild roller coaster ride of emotions in a short amount of time.
The Tigers felt the stunning shock of blowing a 16-point lead to Texas A&M, the thrilling excitement from a last-minute rally that ended in what was originally ruled a game-winning buzzer-beater, the shocked bewilderment of seeing that shot waved off and the empty frustration of going back to the locker room 0-2 in the SEC.
But the calendar doesn’t care about any of that. It just points to what you’ve got next.
“While we would love to have that game in our win column, we turn our attention to obviously a very good Arkansas team,” Steven Pearl said Thursday. “We’ll leave it at that and turn the page to Arkansas. Arkansas is, obviously, a damn good team.”
In a 16-team SEC, there are five 2-0 teams and five 0-2 teams. Arkansas is one of those 2-0 teams, having beaten Tennessee by 11 at home before beating Ole Miss by seven in a road shootout earlier this week. Like the Tigers, the Razorbacks’ only three non-conference losses were to great teams: Michigan State, Duke and Houston.
And, with all due respect to 15-0 Vanderbilt, Arkansas might end up being the best of these currently 2-0 SEC teams.
John Calipari — a man whose former players will make a combined $563 million in NBA contracts this season — has already built one of his vintage rosters in Year 2. He’s added two 5-star freshman guards to a trio of former stud recruits and another trio of battle-tested high-major bigs who all stand at 6-foot-10.
“Coach Cal has done a great job putting this group together,” Pearl said. “They've got eight really good pieces that do a lot of really, really good things.”
On paper, this looks like it could be like one of those classic matchups from several years back, when Calipari would bring a star-studded Kentucky roster to the Plains.
Go back to 2018, when Auburn upset Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and friends at home. Or maybe a year later, when Auburn rallied from a big deficit again a team led by Tyler Herro and Keldon Johnson to fall just short in the end. (That team got its revenge in the Elite Eight.) And then there’s there year after that, when Auburn closed with a flourish to race past the likes of Tyrese Maxey and Immanuel Quickley.
In each of those games, Auburn’s staff couldn’t lean on the same talent level that Calipari’s staff could. But the Tigers found a way to out-execute, out-work and out-hustle the SEC’s cream of the crop in front of a rabid home-court advantage.
Auburn could use another one of those types of performances Saturday. The Tigers got their hearts ripped out twice in the first week of SEC play, falling to 0-2 when they were a few breaks away from 2-0. It’s a massive test of resolve for a first-year coach and a roster that has been through entire seasons’ worth of adversity already.
“We have a lot of fight in us, and we won't stop,” forward Keyshawn Hall said. “But we’ve got to stop putting ourselves in these situations. Let's be ahead at the end of the game instead of being behind, fighting from behind. But it shows that we have a lot of fight, we have a lot of grit, and that we want to win.”
The unforgiving calendar shows 16 more SEC games left — a whole lot of basketball, a whole lot of opportunities.
“There’s not any quit in this group,” Pearl said. “They still believe in each other and the staff, and there’s so much to play for. This league is awesome, because every night you have an opportunity to change your resume for the better. There’s really not any opportunities to change it for the worse.”
Pearl wants his team to keep believing. He noted that the first Final Four team at Auburn, the one that lost to Kentucky close at home, started 2-4 in SEC play. Purdue started 8-4, went on a four-game losing streak in February and still was a shot away from the Elite Eight. (Remember that Matt Painter even said that he thought 2026 Auburn looked a lot like 2025 Purdue.)
And then there’s the team that is rolling into Neville Arena on Saturday. Calipari and Arkansas lost their first five SEC games together last season. They rallied to not only make the NCAA Tournament — the second team in the shot clock era to do that after starting 0-5 in the league — they upset No. 2 seed St. John’s and was a shot away from beating Texas Tech in overtime to advance to the Elite Eight.
The odds are stacking against Auburn with each loss, yes. A turnaround from this slow start is going to take a lot more than what the Tigers have shown, yes. But college basketball fates aren’t determined in early January.
“I talked to the guys and I was just telling them, in conference play… anybody can lose to anybody,” Hall said. “Nobody is just untouchable. Like, you see Michigan almost lose the other day? Nobody's untouchable. Anybody can lose. The conference is going to be more of a fight, because all the coaches know each other. Everybody knows each other's schemes and things like that.
“So you're just going to have to bang it out and not worry about the next game. You have to worry about going 1-0 each day in and out. That’s the main thing.”
For more on what Auburn is going to have to do to go 1-0 on Saturday with an upset win over a talent-filled Arkansas team, here is this week’s edition of The Stretch 4.
The latest on Filip Jović after his early exit vs. A&M
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