Yes, Auburn is still the No. 1 overall seed

Even after going 0-2 last week, the Tigers are unanimously projected to be the top team on Selection Sunday. And, even if they're not...

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — When your team loses back-to-back times after doing a whole lot of winning, it can be natural to overreact.

This time last week, Auburn had the outright SEC regular-season championship clinched. The Tigers were the undisputed and untied winners of what has been called the toughest single conference in modern men’s college basketball. Nothing could take that away from them.

That was important, because Auburn went 0-2 in the final week of the regular season. For the first time, the 2024-25 Tigers are experiencing a losing streak. But the two losses, while disappointing, weren’t anything close to “bad.”

Auburn was without starting guard and top defender Denver Jones for the quick turnaround road game at Texas A&M, which has been a tough matchup for the last several seasons.

While Bruce Pearl lamented that his team got outworked and outplayed in College Station, it was a road Quad 1 loss that plenty of other elite teams have had this season: Duke at Clemson, Florida at Tennessee and Georgia, Alabama at Missouri and Tennessee. Only Houston was able to avoid that kind of defeat in conference play.

Then came an overtime loss to Alabama on a buzzer-beating floater. Again, while the Tigers will feel like they could have done better with their defense and their rebounding, the fact of the matter was that the majority of the second half and overtime was elite, Final Four-caliber basketball that came down to a single play.

The loss did nothing to hurt Auburn’s tournament résumé — just its shot at sweeping its fiercest rival and its chance to cut down the nets in Neville Arena on Senior Day. (And those missed opportunities definitely hurt, even if it didn’t affect any seeding.)

Naturally, there was some overreacting online from Auburn fans.

Did dropping back-to-back games to end the regular season cost the Tigers their shot at being the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament?

Would this mean that they weren’t going to get their favored path: A first weekend in Lexington and, potentially, a second weekend in nearby Atlanta?

Has Duke jumped Auburn for the top spot in the bracket?

As of Monday morning, the answers are as follows:

No.

No.

And no.