In Hoover, Auburn baseball ain't one-and-done — it's eyeing a run

The Tigers haven't won the SEC Tournament since 1998. So, even if their NCAA seeding is already set, they want a long weekend at the Met.

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — In the 2025 SEC Tournament, Auburn’s opener as the No. 6 seed was against a Texas A&M team that had been projected to win the SEC in the preseason — fresh off a College World Series finals appearance — but ended up struggling mightily in conference play, leading to a 14th-place finish and its only path to the NCAA Tournament being to win the SEC Tournament.

With a national seed likely in hand, Auburn opened the tournament with Cam Tilly, a good pitcher who he was a bullpen arm for most of that season and was moved to the rotation later on to serve sort of as an opener for the Tigers.

The Tigers ended up dropping that opener to a desperate Texas A&M squad but still ended up with the No. 4 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Flash-forward a year: Auburn, once again the No. 6 seed in Hoover, opened with the defending national champions LSU — who were projected to win the conference but faltered in the regular season and fell to the No. 14 seed, with its only path to the NCAA Tournament being to win the SEC Tournament.

Funny how that works.

This time around, with a similar, if not better, resume to last season, Auburn made its intentions clear from the get-go: It’s all-in on winning the tournament in Hoover.

“We’ll put our best foot forward to try to do everything we can to win game one,” Auburn head coach Butch Thompson said on Tuesday, ahead of his team’s SEC Tournament opener. “We’d love to stick around for four games and try to make a run at this. Our program has not won this tournament since 1998.

“So we definitely made a commitment today that we’d all be all hands on deck and play this like you’re pursuing a championship.”

Thompson, true to his word, opened with Jake Marciano, his team’s ace. He finished with Jackson Sanders, his team’s — and, arguably, the country’s — best bullpen arm.

The duo combined to allow one run in nine innings to give Auburn a 3-1 win on Wednesday night over a desperate LSU team, closing the game right as storms rolled into the Birmingham metropolitan area.

“That looks like the LSU I remember,” Thompson said postgame. “We didn’t get to play them in the regular season, but that looked like it. They looked like (Casan) Evans and (Zac) Cowan had their stuff set. Those are two national championship-caliber guys out there wheeling and dealing.”

Given Auburn’s current resume consisting of 17 Quad 1 wins and a top-three RPI ranking, coupled with the fact that the committee typically doesn’t value conference tournament results, the Tigers could have probably still earned a national seed with an opening day loss. Instead, they’re choosing to leave no doubt in Hoover.

Here’s everything to know as Auburn gears up for a run in Hoover, continuing Friday with a quarterfinal matchup against Texas A&M.