This is it...don't get scared now.
Now we find out how good Auburn Basketball *can* be
Me: I’m done with Twitter, you rubes.
Also me: Lemme just check to see if there’s a good tweet I can poach:
So there’s one level of hypocrisy from me. The next level: I have to admit that for whatever reason, I was nervous about Saturday’s game at South Carolina. Not because I thought South Carolina was at all good or that we were going to forget how to play basketball, but because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to watch the game. That’s it. Because it has rarely worked out that I go about my day with other plans and check the score afterwards and find a good result. It’s irrational, but maybe you can relate.
However, Auburn did win, and we looked great doing it. South Carolina is awful this season, but they also beat Kentucky at Rupp Arena so maybe my earlier trepidation wasn’t completely crazy. It could very well be the case that the SEC is just all-around bad this year except for Alabama and Tennessee. Or maybe when it’s all said and done, just Alabama. Excuse me while I go puke. But if the rest of the conference really is bad and we’re just trading wins and losses between all the bad teams underneath the top two, does that make Auburn the best bad team right now? I think I’d take that at this point in the season.
As Josh points out above, Auburn has now won five consecutive games since the sky-is-falling Georgia loss in Athens. That’s wins over Arkansas at home, Ole Miss on the road, Mississippi State at home, LSU on the road, and now South Carolina on the road. Even if we dropped just one of those games, I wouldn’t be panicking, especially with three road games. And for people who aren’t convinced that those road wins meant anything, take a look at the “Away” column below:
The numbers don’t lie—road wins are never guaranteed, even against bad teams.
So now that this five-game stretch is finished and Auburn has come out clean on the other side, it feels like everybody is bracing for the next chapter in a long season. The real storm. Auburn fans are tightening up again while pundits and “experts” tell us and everyone else that no, Auburn actually isn’t that good and yes, it’s true that those road wins truly don’t mean anything. As I’ve said before, pace yourselves and let them keep talking. The season will shake out regardless of what, like…Jeff Goodman thinks.
What Auburn did over this five-game stretch was prove it was a good team. That was the baseline. They also proved they were not “just not a very good basketball team.” If you still think that’s true despite Wendell and Johni and Jaylin and Allen all gelling lately, especially on Saturday, then I can’t really help you. A good team under normal circumstances probably wins at least four of those games but maybe drops a close one on the road. Maybe a “not very good” team wins the two home games but drops all three road games. Maybe a bad team doesn’t hold off Mississippi State at home and also drops all three road games, going 1-4 in that same stretch. But Auburn didn’t do that. We went 5-0 because that’s what a good team does.
Okay, I’ve talked ad nauseam about this and I’m tired of it, so let’s move on.
The real test is what follows: Texas A&M at home, West Virginia on the road in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, Georgia at home (against a very different, possibly very angry Auburn team), Tennessee on the road, A&M on the road, and Alabama at home.
I don’t know how good Texas A&M truly is. They seem to have similar scoring problems from time to time, but I don’t hear as much about them. I wonder why that is—oh, that’s right, because their head coach dresses like an oil baron and that’s fun! So far in their SEC campaign, the Aggies have only scored more than 70 points twice: at home against Missouri and at South Carolina, the latter of which we’ve already established is really bad, so no surprises there. A&M is coming off a loss at Kentucky where they were peskier than I expected (they went into halftime with a two-point lead), but Kentucky is only just now starting to find its rhythm and slowly climb up the standings. I don’t know—if this ends up being a low-scoring defensive grind, I like Auburn at home.
If Auburn plays good enough basketball to start this stretch with that win, followed by a win at West Virginia (that means really good Wendell) and a revenge win at home against the Dwags, I don’t suspect we’ll have that much trouble showing up in College Station, even after a potential loss at Tennessee, but you saw that Away column up top, right?
A revenge win over Georgia gives us a much-needed boost ahead of both games—it’s a huge monkey off our back. But I could see either matchup against A&M being close—on the road, they’re certainly going to be a harder matchup than anyone we’ve played on the road since the Georgia loss. And I’ve already made my argument that no road game is a walk in the park this season. A series split here would be…well, it wouldn’t be unexpected to a lot of our fans. Keep the home wins coming and you won’t hear me complain too much.
Anyway, you didn’t open this email because I have the numbers or stats—we’re all about feelings here today—so let me save us all the trouble and quit stalling. Below are my (bold) predictions for the next six games. But if we win half of those games, I’m not panicking, and neither should you. I do think we have what it takes to surprise somebody else during this stretch—there’s too much experience on the floor and peaking team chemistry to not be at least a pest at Tennessee and a challenge at home against Alabama (if we split that series, I’m [EDIT] happy ECSTATIC). Assuming we take care of business at home against A&M and Georgia, I hope Bruce has his “nobody comes into our house and pushes us around” speech ready for February 11th. It’s certainly going to take more than an Instagram hype video to take down the Tide.
My six-game prediction:
Win vs. Texas A&M at home
Win at West Virginia
Win vs. Georgia at home
Loss at Tennessee
Loss at Texas A&M (but it’s close)
…close win vs. Bama at home (Yes, in this scenario, we’re defending a home-court streak that Alabama would love to spoil, and they’re already marking this game as a win, but are we peacocking or not? They have way more to lose than we do. That alone doesn’t win games, but I’m glad they have to come to our place first with that record…and that baggage.)
4-2 record upcoming, but I’ll be happy with 3-3. Feel free to argue with me in the comments. War Eagle.