AUBURN | No. 1 Auburn is off to an 18-1 start including 6-0 in the SEC. Four of those conference wins have come by five points are less.

Of course part of that is playing in a league that could have as many as 13 NCAA Tournament teams. But Bruce Pearl thinks there’s even more to it.

“So we've got to get better. I've got to do a better job. The book is out on everybody,” said Pearl after Saturday night’s 53-51 win over No. 6 Tennessee. “Why was it so difficult to score? We know what they do. They know what we do.

“We put players in good positions. They put their players in good positions. What's plan B? What's plan C? And we got to come up with that.”

Plan A has worked pretty good for the Tigers through the first three months of the season. AU was the unanimous No. 1 in both the AP and Coaches’ Top 25 and leads the nation with 11 Quad 1 wins.

But Pearl knows that his team has to improve for it to win a third SEC regular season championship in the last seven years, and prepare for a long run in March.

His 11th Auburn team hasn’t experienced a lot of adversity yet this season. There was the loss at No. 9 Duke Dec. 4 and playing without Johni Broome for a couple of games last week, but Pearl wants them to be able to bounce back from any disappointments quickly.

"I think the big key is you just can't get too high or too low,” said Pearl. “I talked to the team a lot tonight about how we would have felt if we lost. We have not felt the pain of losing in a while, right?

“It's been a while. We're obviously not gonna like what that tastes like, but it's gonna happen, and it obviously almost happened tonight.”

Auburn is back in action at LSU Wednesday night at 6 p.m. CT on SEC Network.