Auburn football: Rare Sunday hoops matchup completes Iron Bowl weekend

Auburn football will be traveling to Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa for this year’s version of the Iron Bowl, but those visiting family in East Central Alabama on Thanksgiving weekend could catch the Tigers on the hardwood the same weekend.

In a rare case, Auburn basketball will be playing on a Sunday. The matchup will be a return game from last year’s trip to St. Louis to play the SLU Billikens as part of a home-and-home with the A-10 program. As 247Sports’ Nathan King points out, the last time Auburn hoops played Sunday in the regular season was against Lipscomb in December 2019.

The matchup with Saint Louis will be the third home game of the season for Auburn basketball, who will be heading to Cancun during Thanksgiving week to take part in the Cancun Challenge along with Bradley, Liberty, Northwestern, Eastern Michigan, Purdue Fort Wayne, Southern Miss, and Winthrop.

What will Auburn football be battling for during the Iron Bowl?

We are going to go out on a limb and say that Alabama could be heading into Iron Bowl weekend at the end of this coming November aiming to preserve a perfect record, or at worst, trying to clinch a spot in the SEC Championship game.

As for Auburn football? It depends. The Penn State game could be a barometer for how the season goes, but it’s tough to tell which SEC West squads are going to live up to the hype and which won’t. LSU and Ole Miss may be stronger on paper than in actuality, while Mississippi State and Arkansas have often failed to sustain success over multiple seasons since the early 2010s before the CFP era.

For all we know, the Tigers could be in the same boat as Alabama. Far off best-case scenarios aside, it’s likely they’ll be posturing for a better bowl game, if not outright trying to earn bowl eligibility at all come November 26th.

But at least there will be a basketball game the next day.