AUBURN | Southeastern Conference play begins Saturday but No. 12 Auburn’s title defense will have to wait another four days.

The Tigers and the three other conference teams not involved in the SEC-Big 12 Challenge are off the opening weekend of SEC play. Auburn will have 11 days off between a 95-49 win over North Florida Dec. 29 and Wednesday’s trip to Ole Miss.

“You don’t get your conference schedule until sometime in October, it’s kind of hard to put another game in there,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. “I’m a glass half-full person. We’ve had a great workout, great preparation. If we don’t play well at Ole Miss it’s not because we don’t play a game in nine or 10 days it’s because they played better than we did, so that’s not going to be an excuse.”

Auburn is off to an 11-2 start with the losses coming to No. 1 Duke in the Maui Invitational and at No. 18 N.C. State. The extra time off has allowed the Tigers to shore up any weaknesses and get in a lot of physical practices with 10 healthy scholarship players available for full-squad workouts.

“We had two live practices. I thought the guys were engaged. You guys were here for enough to see the energy and it’s been like that all week long,” Pearl said. “We’re still trying to make history. We’re still trying to change history. Our team feels like we’ve got unfinished business. That said, there’s a lot of things I have reminded our team about the start of a season. Tennessee started 0-2 and won the league with us. We would like to get off to another great start.

“We’ve got a couple of road opportunities early in our schedule that are separators if we can get them. It’s just going to be a grind and we’re kind of looking forward to getting into that grind. Saturday five SEC teams are going to lose, that’s going to be a happy day for me. It’s a battle of the fittest, who can survive.”

Auburn won only its third SEC regular season championship in school history last season after starting out 9-1 in conference play. Injuries and lack of depth took a toil down the stretch as AU lost three of its final five games to finish in a tie with co-champion Tennessee at the top of the conference standings.

This year’s conference schedule includes road trips in four of the first six games, home and away matchups against No. 13 Kentucky and No. 17 Mississippi State and concludes with a crucial contest at home against No. 3 Tennessee.

It all starts against the Rebels in the Pavilion at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN2.

“In SEC play, we’re going to get everybody’s best shot this year. We won the SEC last year, so we know that going in,” junior point guard Jared Harper said. “We were just talking about defense and rebounding, they travel everywhere, whether at home or on the road, so if we can control those two things, the offense will come and we’ll be able to win games.”