A bitterly disappointing regular season came to a fitting end for Auburn on Saturday, as the Tigers trailed by as much as 28 in the second half of a blowout loss at rival Alabama. It was the team's eighth defeat in its last 10 games, dropping them to just 16-15 overall and 7-11 in the SEC. As a result, Joe Lunardi's latest bracket projection had Steven Pearl and Co. as ... his last team into the NCAA Tournament field. Wait, what?
ESPN's SEC bias is showing in Joe Lunardi's latest March Madness bracket
No, you didn't read that incorrectly. Despite a thoroughly mediocre record, despite finishing the season on a 2-8 skid and despite finishing 12th in a 16-team conference, Lunardi's latest bubble update had the Tigers fourth among his Last Four In — meaning that, if the season ended today, Auburn would be going on to Dayton for the First Four.
— Joe Lunardi (@ESPNLunardi) March 8, 2026
And Lunardi isn't alone. According to Bracket Matrix, which builds a composite field based on every publicly available tourney projection, 15 different bracketology experts currently have Auburn in their final fields of 68. Whether they're on the right or wrong side of the bubble, it's clear that the Tigers are expected to be among the final teams considered for a spot in March Madness when the selection committee convenes on March 15.
If you have some follow-up questions after hearing all that, we don't blame you. To start: How exactly is a team hovering around .500 in serious consideration for an at-large bid? What about Auburn's resume do bracketologists think will capture the selection committee's attention? Do wins and losses not actually count anymore?
The answer to that last question is closer to "no" than you might think. It's the culmination of a years-long effort from the power conferences to protect their precious position atop the sport, and Auburn might be just the latest beneficiary at the expense of more deserving mid-majors.
Bubble watch: Auburn's case to make the NCAA Tournament
Here's how Auburn's resume stacks up ahead of SEC Tournament play (the Tigers will face Mississippi State in the opening round on Wednesday afternoon):
- NET ranking: 39
- Strength of schedule (per KenPom): 2
- Non-con strength of schedule (per KenPom): 27
- Quad 1 record: 4-12
- Quad 2 record: 4-2
- Quad 3 record: 2-1
- Quad 4 record: 6-0
The Tigers' case for an at-large bid is much more about who they've played than how they've played. Auburn challenged itself in the non-conference, with wins over tournament teams in St. John's and NC State and losses to powerhouses like Houston, Purdue, Arizona and Michigan.
And while there have been a lot of losses, there are almost no bad ones. The one true blemish on the record is an 85-79 defeat at home against a poor Ole Miss team; other than that, Auburn's losses have all come against respectable (at worst) competition — and all but four of them have come away from home. If you're arguing for this team's spot in March Madness, you want that sort of schedule to be rewarded, and for the committee to recognize genuinely great wins at Florida and at home against Arkansas (the latter of which came by 22 points).
Of course, that argument leaves a lot of things out. For starters, it's hard to argue for Auburn's ceiling when those highs are more than canceled out by many, many lows. Pointing to a difficult schedule is all well and good, and the Tigers should be credited for playing elite competition in addition to the SEC gauntlet. But playing tough teams isn't an at-large case in and of itself; you do need to actually, you know, win games. After all, isn't that the whole point?
Auburn is benefitting from NCAA Tournament's desire to placate the power conferences
Pearl and Auburn's defenders in the media (like, notably, his father) can point to the Florida and Arkansas wins all they want. But we know who this Auburn team is: They've lost two-thirds of the games they've played against Quad 1 opponents, a clear sign that they're simply not good enough to win several games in a row in March. Get swings, and you're bound to strike gold eventually; the fact that they notched a marquee win in their 11th opportunity just proves that it took them 11 tries to do so. That's a mark against them, not for them.
But this is the world that the NCAA is trying to create, at the behest of power leagues like the SEC. The whole reason that NET ranking — which uses the quadrant system to determine how "good" or "bad" a given result was — replaced RPI as the selection committee's key catch-all metric was so that teams like Auburn could get credit for playing and losing to good teams while a mid-major like Miami (Ohio) would get zero credit for an undefeated regular season.
Which is, to be blunt, hogwash. I can understand why SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and his friends are in favor of it, but normal fans don't need to buy their spin. We know all we need to know about the quality of Auburn's team this season, and it's clearly not all that good. Miami, by contrast, has passed every test; maybe the RedHawks would flame out in the tournament once the competition ratchets up, but don't they at least deserve a shot?
If the answer is no, then we might as well dispense with the selection committee entirely. Choosing a team with Auburn's resume is essentially an admission that the only thing that matters is playing brand names, no matter what the final score says. That's contrary to the spirit that has made March Madness such a beloved institution, and not a world I want to live in.