Auburn basketball took a tumble in Tennessee on Saturday, but they don’t appear likely to make one in the NCAAM rankings.
On the wrong side of a 67-62 score as 3.5-point road underdogs, Bruce Pearl’s Tigers went down for the second time in the last week after a last-second loss in Gainesville to the Gators last Saturday.
Is it time to panic? Absolutely not.
Pretty much every other team that needed to lose did as well on what was the most chaotic day in college basketball in a very long time.
Kentucky’s loss to Arkansas keeps a one-game buffer in the SEC standings for Auburn basketball, but the No. 1 and No. 2 teams also took losses…and they were far worse than the Tigers’ out in a most hostile Thompson-Boling Arena.
Gonzaga lost by double digits to Saint Mary’s who, to the WCC’s credit, is also a ranked team. Arizona’s lost by 16 to an unranked Colorado Buffs. Then there was #4 Purdue going down at the buzzer to unranked Michigan State and #5 Kansas taking a double digit loss in Waco to the defending champions.
It was not the best day to be one of the best teams. Truthfully, the losses could help all of these teams shape up ahead of their respective conference tournaments.
But in the meantime, did enough teams lose to not only keep AU from freefalling in the AP Poll, but to actually once again become the #1 team?
AP voters are the reason Auburn basketball won’t be the No. 1 team again in the regular season
Should Auburn run the SEC gauntlet and claim their second SEC tournament championship in a row in eligible seasons, the AP voters won’t be able to deny the Tigers a #1 seed in the NCAA March Madness bracket.
Short of that, we’ve likely seen the last of the Tigers at the top of the poll this season due to a seemingly aggressive bias against Pearl from poll voters.
That doesn’t mean a thing after Selection Sunday, though. AU is the most talented team in the field regardless of where a single writer puts them in their poll.