Auburn head basketball coach Bruce Pearl got a shoutout from CBS Sports' Gary Parrish for being on the winning end of two No. 1/No. 2 matchups in his career. This one, an IBOB victory over Alabama, was the sweeter one.
"It Just Means More" that it was two SEC teams. Beating Memphis while at Tennessee doesn't compare to the IBOB for Pearl. He'd most certainly admit that.
Parrish took the praise a step further, crediting Pearl's Tigers for having a significantly better resume than any other team in the country as the only two-loss team.
"Needless to say, Auburn remains No. 1 in Sunday morning's updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings for the 40th consecutive day, And, at this point, it's reasonable to assume the Tigers will be there for a while considering the gap between their body of work and everybody else's," Parrish wrote.
"It's large and growing.
"Auburn's nine-point win at Alabama pushed the Tigers to 14-2 in Quadrant 1 with zero additional defeats. That means Auburn has fewer losses than any other ranked team and at least six more Q1 wins than everybody else. So, even though the Tigers haven't quite separated from the pack in the predictive metrics, they have definitely pulled away from all challengers in any conversation about bodies of work."
AU's body of work includes losses to a pair of regional No. 1 seeds if March Madness started today, Duke and Florida, and wins against the likes of Alabama, Tennessee, Houston, Purdue, and Iowa State; all top-16 teams.
There's little doubting them now after marching into hostile territory and coming away with a historic win.
Auburn faces ranked teams in four of their last games, including an IBOB rematch on the Plains. Assuming they can keep this up, the No. 1 overall seed in March Madness could be in play for the Tigers.