I wonder what odds you would have gotten in August, or even late October, that Auburn would not win a game in November of 2021.

“Not one? C’mon, there’s no way this team loses to Mississippi State, much less South Carolina.”

And yet, going into this Thanksgiving week, Auburn has done just that. Zero wins this month — and a season of promise collapsed into could-have-been mush in Columbia.

There’s so much about the South Carolina game, especially when paired with the State game a week ago, that doesn’t make any sense. If you’re offensive coordinator Mike Bobo or even the head coach, Bryan Harsin, you knew before you got on the plane that your quarterback was not consistent. T.J. Finley is eaten up with heart and physical talent, but to date he has not been well-developed as a passer.

He can make a big throw; the fourth-down pass to Shed Jackson on Auburn’s last meaningful drive was a good example. But at this point in his development he’ll also miss at least as many as he hits.

That’s why he didn’t get the start at LSU a couple of months ago. There was no reasonable expectation that he’d be effective enough through the air to win.

So why on Earth would you put in a game plan this week that called for him to throw the ball 32 times? This despite playing a team that’s vulnerable against the run and you have a running back who could consistently get big chunks of yardage?

Why do you call a low-percentage pass on a 4th-and-short on the wrong side of the 50 with a lead? Even without Bigsby in the game, Shawn Shivers had a hole the size of Cleveland off the right side of the line for an easy first down plus a lot more.

Instead Finley overthrew into triple coverage, giving South Carolina the ball and eventually a tying score, The entire momentum of the game was flipped.

Why do you do that? Under the previous regime that would have been called “getting too cute.” On the road in a game you had to win, I call it “unforgivable stupidity.”

There’s nothing about that game plan, or the lack of adjustments, that passes the sanity test.

Once again the offense went into a coma after getting a two-score lead, and anytime the running game got into a rhythm, Bobo started throwing. The offense bogged down in the red zone (again) and settled for field-goal attempts ... with a backup kicker.

The capper: Tank Bigsby didn’t even touch the ball during the Tigers’ last possession, after averaging almost eight yards a carry for the game.

That’s not even incompetence in play calling. That’s malfeasance.

The defense, while playing well enough to have won if they’d gotten any second-half help from the offense (again), also never adjusted after Carolina got its act together late in the second quarter.

And to finish up, a special teams botch that gave the Birmingham Boys in the replay room the chance to stick in the knife and take away any chance of a last-minute comeback.

Yeah, it was typical, horrible SEC officiating the kind of thing that happens all too often to everybody not named Alabama or, at least for this year, Georgia. ut once again the door to that last insult was opened by Auburn blowing one opportunity after another.

And that’s the story of most of this season. Minus the Georgia game that Auburn wasn't going to win, every loss this season has been a litany of missed opportunities thanks to subpar game plans, botched execution or old-fashioned dumb decisions.

As recently as Halloween, Harsin and company had patched together a season that had the Tigers in place to be one of the bigger national stories of 2021.

Three increasingly miserable losses later, with one more very likely on the way, I guess that prediction came true, but not in the way anyone would have expected.

Barring extraordinary circumstances, none of which are present now, Harsin, like almost every head coach anywhere, will get a pass on his first year.

During a transition year you can lose to almost anybody — Wake Forest, UAB, even Louisiana Monroe — with the understanding that you’re dealing with a lot of issues beyond your control. Even an inexplicable 0-for-November will draw a Year One Mulligan.

But only once. Never again.