ESPN's Mark Schlabach updated his Bubble Watch tonight. Here's what he had to say about Auburn:
Auburn [21-10 (10-6), RPI: 64, SOS: 69] The Tigers are probably still a fringe bubble candidate at best, but their 8-1 finish in the regular season at least gets them in the discussion heading into the SEC tournament. Auburn has two RPI top-50 victories, beating Tennessee 78-77 at home on Feb. 7 and LSU 69-53 at home on Saturday. The Tigers are 2-5 against RPI top-50 foes and 5-9 against the top 100. The Tigers did absolutely nothing during their non-conference season -- their best victory came against RPI No. 106 Virginia (their next-best non-SEC win came against No. 204 George Washington). Auburn has a first-round bye in the SEC tournament and plays the Arkansas/Florida winner in Friday's quarterfinals. It probably needs at least two wins in Tampa to have a chance on Selection Sunday.That's certainly better news than last week, when Auburn wasn't even mentioned in that space. But it lays out a pretty grim picture for the Tigers in the upcoming week.
On another note, Northern Iowa topped Illinois State in overtime to grab the Missouri Valley Conference's automatic berth to the Big Dance. The Panthers beat Auburn 67-61 back in November in the Chicago Invitational. If Auburn doesn't get in to the NCAAs, it's going to look back at that weekend -- which also featured an overtime loss to Dayton (RPI: 23) when the Flyers went 0-for-24 on 3-pointers -- and grit its teeth.
2 comments:
dont forget that early non conference games against were played without Barrett who has been an impact player down the stretch.
It makes it look bad for the Tigers, but I've decided that all the "experts" are a huge joke. In '03, we got an at-large, and everyone said we were the worst team to make it in, and then we got to the Sweet 16, playing eventual champion Syracuse to within a point, their closest game of the whole tournament.
We've all heard about that before, but still, it shows what a joke these guys are. Our RPI is now in the top 64. We finished strong, went 21-10 and 10-6 in conference. They think we're not even worthy of being on the bubble because of our conference. Yet with a nearly identical record, South Carolina's in right now.
It's all a joke, and as long as we win one game in the tournament, I think we're in, and all the Auburn fans will get the last laugh at the experts. The selection committee doesn't play favorites as much as the media does.
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