10 incredible stats from Auburn basketball's first 10 games
Even with a loss to Duke, Auburn is on a historically strong pace to open the season. Here are the craziest numbers from the Tigers' start.
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SF Chad Baker-Mazara (Steven Leonard/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — If you’re a computer, you likely think that Auburn is the No. 1 team in men’s college basketball right now.
If you’re a human, you might think that Auburn is the No. 2 team in men’s college basketball right now.
(Well, to be honest, the vast majority of the humans reading this newsletter think that Auburn is No. 1 instead of No. 2.)
After going 9-1 to start the season — with the lone loss coming by single-digits on the road at powerhouse Duke — Auburn is the consensus No. 1 team by the major computer rating systems. The NCAA’s own NET tool, KenPom, T-Rank, EvanMiya, Haslametrics, ESPN’s BPI and TeamRankings all have the Tigers on top.
The two major human polls, the ones from the Associated Press and the coaches, have Auburn at No. 2 behind undefeated Tennessee. The same goes for prominent college basketball analysts such as Gary Parrish at CBS and John Fanta at FOX.
There’s some logic to that. Tennessee is a major-conference team that hasn’t lost yet, and it can’t fully control the fact it hasn’t beaten a ranked opponent this season. Until the Volunteers slip up, most human voters will prefer to keep them at No. 1. It usually takes losses for teams to fall at all.
But the computer rating systems that scrape play-by-play data, weigh things with strength of schedule in mind and analyze a massive amount of the measurable statistics all prefer Auburn. That was sealed Saturday in Atlanta, when Auburn beat a top-20 NET team in Ohio State as badly as the worst paycheck blowouts this season.
Six of Auburn’s first 10 games this season were the premier “Quadrant 1” matchups that the NET — which is a guide in seeding the NCAA Tournament — values more than anything else. It’s played a top-10 schedule, according to virtually every metric.
Auburn always had the potential for this kind of start, considering the non-conference schedule it lined up. The Tigers knew they were playing Houston in their home city, a loaded Maui Invitational field, Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium, Ohio State in Atlanta and, later this weekend, Purdue in Birmingham. Essentially, it was a no-risk, all-reward type of schedule, as long as Auburn didn’t get exposed as a pretender early.
Instead, it’s cemented itself as an even stronger contender — not just in what might be a historically strong SEC, but in the national championship hunt.
Did Bruce Pearl see this kind of start coming? I asked him that question Monday afternoon. His response was a perfect reflection of the mindset that’s gotten the Tigers to this point, where they’re treating every opponent seriously and playing like it.
“We just, honestly, take them one game at a time,” Pearl said. “We're still going to take them one at a time. We're not reflecting on where we are right now. We are working on areas that we think we have to get better. To play the caliber schedule that we played, and be in a position we're in right now, is certainly everything I could have hoped for.
“But we've got this one (against Georgia State) Tuesday, and then we got Purdue on Saturday. And then the team that beat Kansas — Missouri — comes in January. We're just again, focused on one at a time. But we’re pleased with where we're at.”
And Pearl is right. Auburn hasn’t arrived yet. It still has three non-conference games left to play, including a matchup against a strong Purdue program, before the absolute gauntlet of SEC play. Hot starts only matter if they are paired with strong finishes.
But, before Auburn plays Georgia State on Tuesday night as a projected 34-point favorite, let’s take some time to look at just how incredible this start has been for the Tigers. Because, as recent history suggests, opening like this can really show what kind of potential a team has for the long haul.
Here are 10 incredible stats from Auburn’s first 10 games of the 2024-25 season.
1. Auburn is college basketball’s best team at this point in the calendar since (at least) 2011… by a large margin.
This number made the rounds online Sunday and Monday, but it’s worth repeating here in case you haven’t seen it yet.
Auburn’s KenPom net rating is +35.01, which is almost four points higher than No. 2 Tennessee. That’s bigger than the gap between No. 10 Kansas and No. 31 Arizona.
According to CJ Moore of The Athletic — a human that has Auburn on top of his Top 25, for what it’s worth — Auburn’s KenPom rating is by far the best of any team on December 15 for any season since 2011-12, when the historical data first starts.