Auburn Basketball Editorial

This is an editorial I wrote earlier this year about Auburn Basketball:


The Auburn basketball program appeared to be left for dead.

Gone were the days of NCAA tournament appearances.

At this point, the Auburn faithful would be pleased with a mere National Invitational Tournament bid, which is a tournament of teams who do not quite have a good enough record to make the Big Dance.

After two consecutive losing seasons, things were bleak.

Jeff Lebo knew that building the program to a winning level would be an uphill battle.

Then, things got worse. Auburn started the 2006-2007 season with a loss to AUM, which is not even an NCAA institution. Granted the game was an exhibition and not marked for the record books, but the damage had been done. The only thing left to do is look forward. The program could not fall any further.

No need for Lebo to pull his hair out. After all, he has no hair to pull.

Auburn went into conference play with a decent 10-5 record. All the wins came against mid-level to lower tier competition. Four of their five losses came against ranked opponents: Oklahoma State, Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, and Texas A&M.

Auburn began conference play with a win against Vanderbilt. The winning ways were short lived as Kentucky easily defeated the Tigers. Then, Auburn lost in Baton Rouge to the ranked LSU Tigers. Auburn gave LSU all they could handle and then some, but it still was not enough. Auburn fell 65-63.

Despite the loss, Auburn was hanging with the best of them.

The Tigers went into the Tennessee game with an overall record of 11-7 and (1-2) in Southeastern Conference play. The Vols came in with a top 25 ranking.

Auburn and Tennessee went back and fourth with ties and lead changes. Then, midway through the second half, Auburn began to slide and found themselves trailing by 14.
Then, in a change of events, Tennessee had a complete meltdown. They could not hit a shot. Plus, they were not protecting the ball.

Auburn went on an 18-0 run and to victory as they beat the Volunteers 83-80 in front of a near (if you remove 5,000 of the over 10,000 seat capacity in Beard Eaves Memorial Coliseum) sellout crowd.

Auburn now sits at (2-2) in conference play and 12-7 overall. The 12 wins already match last season’s total.

The win against Tennessee gave Auburn confidence and a legitimate shot of exiting the cellar of the SEC West.

The players and coaches were ecstatic.

The fans celebrated just like they did when the football team won the Iron Bowl a couple of months back, well… almost.