Auburn Basketball’s Historic Run: A Season for the Ages
How Bruce Pearl’s Tigers Became SEC Champions and Chased Basketball Immortality
Auburn basketball historic season:
Auburn wraps up the regular season next Saturday with Alabama, and that game will be a celebration for the Tigers, but the 94-78 win against Kentucky was excellent.
Kentucky is a team in transition, and is ranked 10th in the SEC, but it’s still Big Blue and it was still Rupp Arena.
Auburn hadn’t won there since 1988, but on Saturday, March 1, 2025—37 years later—coach Bruce Pearl and his top-ranked team finally broke the streak. Team won the SEC, a league of blood and bones ruled by one of the most brutal teams the game has ever seen.
They turned off the lights in Kentucky.
They turned off the sound and raged in Alabama.
They squared off with Tennessee, and, unlike the Crimson Tide, swept the hard-hitting Volunteers.
No. 1 Auburn, and its 27-2 overall and near-perfect 15-1 record in the SEC, has won in every venue except two this season, Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium and Florida’s O’Connell Center. But these necklaces are just like any other. What really matters is that the SEC and NCAA tournaments could still be all about redemption for the nation’s top team.
Still not undisputed.
There’s still work to be done, and there’s still bitterness between every breath, and these Tigers are ready. Because despite the historic success of this regular season, the real goal was never just this championship. It was about the championship. It was about redemption in March. It was about winning the national title and cutting down the net in San Antonio.
Johnny Broome is the best player in the country, and Auburn has the most efficient offense ever, but if this team loses once again in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, none of that stuff will mean anything in the end.
The job remains outstanding. Not with sight. Not after Yale participated last March, not with all the money spent to bring this team together. For this team, the mission has not even started.
Still, for the sake of history, it’s worth taking a moment to pause and reflect on the significance of the occasion.
The 2025 Auburn Tigers are one of the best teams in SEC history, and Architect Pearl will surely win the national coach of the year award. After this season, they may consider naming the award in his honor.
Auburn is the conference champion of the toughest league in the game of college basketball since the glory days of the Big East. Maybe ever. We will know in April.
How do you beat this team? Expect a great performance from Chad Baker-Mazara. This is the scouting report and maybe this is it.
Of all the numbers we can cite about this group, there are two that put this season into perspective.
Auburn has 16 Quad 1 wins and two more remaining on the regular season schedule. In 2024, eventual national champion UConn did not have a 16 until reaching the Final Four.
The most impressive college team I’ve ever covered was the 2007 Florida Gators. This Auburn team will be in that discussion if it wins the SEC and NCAA tournaments. The ’07 Gators, coached by Billy Donovan and hosting a host of future NBA stars, had five players who averaged at least 10 points per game. This Auburn team has six.
But defense was the true identity of those historic Gators, and so it is with this team, the greatest team in Auburn basketball history. He destroyed teams with his attack, but he also won close matches.
Poor Kentucky couldn’t even make a shot at the beginning of the second half. In their own barn, with all their fans, the Cats were so overwhelmed by Auburn’s defense that they couldn’t even shoot the ball. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and that’s no exaggeration.
Kentucky committed six turnovers in the first three minutes of the second half.
A team like this leaves no doubts.
This is how an all-time team becomes a legend.
