The Auburn Tigers are sitting about as pretty as possible in every sense. With eyes toward March Madness and the field of 68, Bruce Pearl's team would be a lock for the No. 1 overall seed if Cooper Flagg and Duke didn't exist. And entering this weekend's road matchup against the Kentucky Wildcats, the Tigers are also on the verge of locking up at least a share of the SEC.
A win over Kentucky would ensure that Auburn is, at minimum, co-SEC regular season champions as they come into the matchup with a two-game lead over Alabama in the conference. Of course, with how loaded the conference has been this season with the potential to get a record-setting number of teams into the NCAA Tournament, the potential to lock that up with two games to play speaks to how good the Tigers have been.
Having said that, they will be going on the road to Rupp Arena for Saturday's matchup with Kentucky, and that in itself could make things a bit trickier for Auburn than you might realize. Put as plainly as possible, that building has been a house of horrors for the Tigers for more than three decades.
Auburn hasn't beaten Kentucky in Rupp Arena since 1988
You have to go back 37 years to Jan. 9, 1988 to find the last time that Auburn notched a win over Kentucky inside Rupp Arena. That win was an upset victory over the top-ranked Wildcats at the time. Moreover, that is also one of only two program wins at Rupp Arena for Auburn in its history, the other coming in 1983. So yeah, it's safe to say that Pearl's Tigers will be trying to rewrite a bit of history on Saturday.
However, if the trends continue the way they have for nearly 40 years with Auburn playing at Kentucky, there is a world in which the SEC could slip through Auburn's grasp.
The Tigers finish the regular season with the matchup at Kentucky, then on the road at Texas A&M on Tuesday before the season finale in the rivalry matchup against Alabama, which thankfully will be at home. With only a two-game lead in the SEC, though, an Auburn loss at Rupp Arena coupled with a Crimson Tide win on Saturday on the road at Tennessee (far from a given, sure), would trim that lead to one game. If the Tigers were to then lose to Texas A&M and Bama beats Florida at home on Wednesday, that would leave the two rivals tied atop the SEC going into the finale.
Is all of that likely? Perhaps not. But the SEC has been a gauntlet all year that has yielded parity and a plethora of surprising results. It seems like a league ripe for chaos and a finish such as that would certainly fit the bill in that capacity. It also just so happens, as mentioned, that history is on the side of that first step happening with Auburn playing in their most unfriendly environment, Rupp Arena.