The Auburn Tigers are one of the last two unbeaten teams in the country and will look to keep their perfect season alive as they take on their biggest rival, the Alabama Crimson Tide.
When you get into mid-January with an undefeated record in college basketball, you have to be doing something right. Few would have pegged the Auburn Tigers as one of the teams capable of doing that at the start of the season, but head coach Bruce Pearl has done a masterful job so far.
The Tigers lost a lot of talent off their Final Four team from a year ago, but Pearl’s team has taken care of business thanks to their explosive offense. Auburn scores 82.1 points per game, the 11th most in the country, and features four double-digit scorers on the roster.
The headliner has been guard Samir Doughty, who averages 15.1 points per game, but perhaps the most important player has been center Austin Wiley. The big man averages 10.7 points per game and grabs 9.2 rebounds a night, making him a key cog on both ends of the floor.
The Tigers will put their perfect record to the test as they take an in-state road trip to take on their biggest rivals, the Alabama Crimson Tide. While the schools have a much more noted football rivalry in the Iron Bowl, things can get feisty when the Tigers and the Crimson Tide take the floor.
It has been a trying season for Alabama, which finds itself squarely in the middle of the pack in the always-competitive SEC. The Crimson Tide haven’t really picked up a marquee win to date, and the year got off to a bad start with a one-point home loss in a buy game to Penn.
When it comes to describing Alabama, you can expect plenty of shootouts. The Crimson Tide score 83.2 points per game, which is the fifth-best in the country, but they offset that by giving up 78.7 a night. That defensive figure is 338th in the country, and poor performance on the defensive end of the floor is a big part of why the Crimson Tide have been a thoroughly average team in the early going.
How to watch Auburn at Alabama
- Date: Wednesday, Jan. 15
- Time: 9:00 p.m. ET
- Location: Tuscaloosa, AL
- Venue: Coleman Coliseum
- TV: ESPN2
- Live Stream: WatchESPN
- Odds: The Action Network
- Prediction: Auburn
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