Last year, on its way to the No. 1 overall seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament and the program’s second Final Four appearance, Auburn became one of the most breathlessly discussed teams in men’s college basketball.
The Tigers’ star player, Johni Broome, was at the center of a season-long national player of the year debate with Duke’s Cooper Flagg. They had an exceptionally old roster, with five players in their rotation who were at least 21 years old, including one, 25-year-old Chad Baker-Mazara, who was old enough to run for a seat in Congress. At the head of the operation was coach Bruce Pearl, a man who, for all of his teams’ accomplishments, has been a subject of controversy for much of his career, going all the way back to his days as an assistant at Iowa in the late 1980s (you can Google “Bruce Pearl Deon Thomas”).
And, to think, the 2025-26 edition of the Tigers may be even more polarizing.
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Even with Pearl enjoying retirement and his son, Steven, at the helm, Auburn has perhaps the most contentious resume for an at-large berth to the 2026 NCAA Tournament. The Tigers have a power-conference pedigree, a talented roster and a handful of highly impressive wins, but they’re just 17-16 this season after falling 72-62 to Tennessee in the second round of the SEC tournament Thursday, March 12.
The argument around their candidacy has only ramped up in recent weeks, as the elder Pearl, now working as an analyst for TNT and CBS Sports, has publicly belittled the at-large hopes of fellow bubble dweller Miami (Ohio), which went a perfect 31-0 in the regular season before losing to UMass in the quarterfinals of the MAC tournament Thursday.
Its tournament case has touched on some of the rawest, most searing divides in college basketball — namely, whether the final at-large spots should go to middling power-conference teams or mid-major squads with gaudy records that fell short in their conference tournaments. It’s a split that has only gotten more pronounced as the NCAA mulls tournament expansion, raising questions about which kind of teams will end up getting those additional spots.
So what’s at the heart of the dispute over the Tigers? Let’s take a deeper look at their NCAA Tournament resume:
Auburn basketball’s record is bad
The SEC tournament loss to Tennessee was Auburn’s 16th defeat of the season, putting it only one game above .500 (mind you, the NIT used to require participants have at least a .500 record). If the Tigers are selected for the 68-team field, they’d have the most losses ever for an at-large team. No squad with more than 15 losses has ever made the cut for March Madness.
That record includes a 7-11 mark in SEC play during the regular season, which put it 12th in the 16-team conference. Though the conference was considered stronger and deeper last season, six SEC teams got into the 2025 NCAA Tournament with sub-.500 conference records, including two, Oklahoma and Texas, that were 6-12 in league competition.
Those subpar records for Auburn become even more glaring when compared to other teams fighting for the final at-large berths into the tournament — a group that includes, among others, 20-13 SMU, 20-12 Missouri, 21-11 UCF, 26-8 Santa Clara, 24-7 VCU and, of course, 31-1 Miami (Ohio).
Auburn’s March Madness resume metrics are solid
While win-loss records understandably are the most obvious way to measure a team, there are a slew of other metrics that are a part of the team sheet examined by the NCAA Tournament selection committee when trying to fill in the 68-team bracket.
Thankfully for Auburn, a number of those statistical barometers are much kinder to the Tigers.
As of early Thursday evening, Auburn is No. 38 in the NCAA’s NET rankings (though it will likely drop a spot or two when those are updated Friday morning), No. 39 on KenPom, No. 41 on Torvik, No. 26 on BPI and No. 45 on KPI (those final two, like the NET, haven’t been updated to reflect the Tennessee loss).
How can a team that narrowly avoided a losing record be well within the statistical range of a typical at-large team? Much of it comes back to the quality of the Tigers’ schedule.
Auburn has played 17 Quad 1 games this season, tied for the most of any Division I team. Though it hasn’t fared particularly well in those contests, with a 4-13 record, it has picked up a handful of notable wins. The Tigers beat No. 13 St. John’s in a neutral-site game on Nov. 26. It has home victories against No. 17 Arkansas and Kentucky. And, most impressively, it has a 76-67 road win over reigning national champion Florida, which is the Gators’ only home loss this season.
For all those numbers, the most important one to keep in mind heading into Selection Sunday may well be this one: 0.62. That was the Tigers’ Wins Above Bubble mark entering the day Thursday. It’s a metric NCAA senior vice president for basketball Dan Gavitt has said will be weighed heavily when trying to sift through bubble teams. That mark ranks Auburn No. 44, putting it behind, among others, No. 31 TCU, No. 33 Miami (Ohio), No. 35 Ohio State, No. 36 UCF, No. 37 Santa Clara, No. 40 Missouri and No. 42 VCU, though it also puts it ahead of No. 45 SMU, No. 46 Texas, No. 49 New Mexico, No. 51 Indiana and No. 53 Oklahoma.
Will Auburn make NCAA Tournament?
There’s nothing resembling a clear consensus on whether the Tigers will make the field, though they’re just outside of the field according to Bracket Matrix, which compiles and averages out dozens of mock brackets.
Here’s a look at where various outlets have Auburn:
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why Auburn basketball has most polarizing 2026 NCAA Tournament resume
