These are the 3 toughest games remaining on the Auburn basketball schedule

Bruce Pearl is about to have Auburn basketball as the #1 seed in the nation. Surreal stuff for more seasoned generations of Tiger fans.

They should be #1 already, of course, but Jesse Newell of the Kansas City Star wanted to be a sports media celebrity and get his 15 minutes of fame, which quite frankly, is pretty damn lame.

But it’s cool. Auburn opened the gates for John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats and the Tigers–with a serious helping hand from an impassioned student section that turned the outside of the Auburn Arena into a tent city while waiting in line for Saturday’s matinee on Friday night— and they sent them away having lost by nine.

UK fans will claim injuries to TyTy Washington (which is legitimate) and a three-minute stretch in the second half that Sahvir Wheeler was out for (not my claim, that’d be the Courier Journal’s) was the Wildcats’ undoing.

Truthfully, though, this was simply a game that ‘The Jungle’ wasn’t going to be let down for. Remember, the Auburn Arena has only seen wins in 2021-22. In fact, the Tigers haven’t lost in America this season, and have only lost double overtime on a neutral site in the Bahamas against a ranked UCONN team.

So, who could be the team to knock off the Tigers next in the regular season?

Possibly no one. But these 3 teams may pose the biggest threat:

Tennessee will be the last significant test for Auburn basketball in 2021-22

The third to last game of the season will take place in Knoxville, Tennessee against a Volunteers team that owns one of this season’s best wins against Arizona.

While the Volunteers have been silenced by the likes of Alabama, Texas Tech, and Kentucky, they are still one of the SEC’s deepest teams. Given that the matchup will be played with a checkered baseline, this figures to be a major final hurdle to clear for Bruce Pearl in his own stomping grounds in 2021-22.