Can Auburn "stay excited" and avoid a letdown at LSU?
The Tigers have stayed at No. 1 in the country by taking — and playing — everyone seriously. That'll get put to test in Baton Rouge.
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — The price on Auburn’s head couldn’t be any bigger right now.
For the second week in a row, Auburn is the unanimous No. 1 team in the Associated Press Top 25 poll. The Tigers are No. 1 in the NET, having 11 Quad 1 victories — three more than the next closest team, Oregon, and at least four more than any other program in the country.
Look at any NCAA Tournament bracket projection, and you’ll find Auburn as the overall No. 1 seed. After all, the Tigers are the only team in Division I that has yet to suffer a second loss this season. They’ve done that, mind you, while playing what KenPom considers the single-toughest schedule in the sport to this point.
Six of Auburn’s 18 wins have come by five points or less, meaning the Tigers have had to work extra-hard to maintain that unquestioned top spot in college basketball. And, according to head coach Bruce Pearl, part of the reason why Auburn has been able to do so is because his team hasn’t overlooked a single opponent yet.
“Our guys have done a good job so far this year where we've been excited about playing everybody,” Pearl said Tuesday. “We have. Are we due for a letdown? I suppose. But I haven't seen it yet.”
At first glance, Auburn’s matchup Wednesday night looks like a reprieve from what it’s had to go through recently.
After beating a Missouri team that went on to win five of its next six in SEC play, Auburn survived a trip to face talent-laden Texas before rallying to beat South Carolina without National Player of the Year contender Johni Broome.
The Tigers then had to beat Mississippi State and Georgia — the latter on the road — without Broome before outlasting Tennessee last Saturday in the highest-profile game in the history of Neville Arena.
LSU, by comparison, doesn’t look nearly as daunting for a full-strength Auburn squad. (Pearl made it sound like Broome will, indeed, be back in the starting lineup this time.)
The Bayou Bengals are 1-5 in SEC play, and their best non-conference win came in triple overtime against a UCF team that sits outside the top 60 in the NET. KenPom has LSU currently pegged as the second-worst team in the conference, jockeying for position between a disappointing Arkansas squad and luckless South Carolina.
But this is the SEC, which might be the single strongest conference in the history of modern college basketball this season. So it doesn’t take Pearl — who has been doing this scouting thing a long time — to find plenty of reason to respect LSU.
“Well, nothing is going to be easy in this league,” Pearl said with a small laugh. “You know, you wouldn’t expect anything less from me, you’ve been with me for 11 years now. But, you know, LSU is 10-1 at home. The only loss was to Vanderbilt, in a game where they led 56-55 with six to go, which is a great road win for Vanderbilt.
“They played at Alabama, the fourth-ranked team in the country, on Saturday. They led in the second half and really, really played well.”
LSU is one of the only teams in the SEC that isn’t a fixture in the early NCAA Tournament projections. (The league is currently projected to shatter the record for the most teams in a single field.) The purple-and-gold Tigers are on the outside looking in, but they know a lot can change with a single upset.
“This is a Quad 1 opportunity for us,” Pearl said. “But, for LSU, this is a separator. … They're like one win against a team like Auburn away from being in. And, so, that's what we're going to face.”
Auburn is also going to face the player who is scoring more points in SEC games than anybody else in the league right now.