AUBURN | Last year, Auburn stormed from the No. 5 seed to win four consecutive games and only its second SEC Tournament championship in program history.
The Tigers have secured the No. 2 seed in this year’s tournament, one that Bruce Pearl believes is just as open as last year for a Cinderella-like run.
“Kentucky demonstrated that they are head and shoulders above the rest but beyond that, I think anybody is capable,” Pearl said. “The way there are certain teams that spread it and shoot it, they’re real dangerous. Some teams that have a little bit more depth could be those teams that could win four.
“But I do think it’s a wide open field and I think all the teams are still playing, they’re still engaged. They can look at us last year and we were a five seed that was able to cut the nets so it certainly can happen.”
Because of that parity, Pearl and his staff will go into the SECT with a full scouting report on all 14 teams while also spending their practice pushing his players to take the next step as they enter the knockout stage of their season.
“We’ll focus on us,” said Pearl of this week’s plan. “I’ll split my coaching staff up in the bracket. We’ll prepare for all the scouts all the way to the championship game.”
Auburn will enter the 2020 SEC Tournament the No. 2 seed after playing its best game of the season in an 85-63 win at Tennessee to close out the regular season. The Tigers, which received a double-bye, will play the winner of Thursday night’s Missouri-Texas A&M game on Friday night.
“Sometimes the toughest one to win, as I said even going into last year’s NCAA Tournament, is the first one. That’s the toughest one to win,” Pearl said. “New Mexico State was a tougher one for us to win than any of the others that we played, and we survived and advanced and I think that will be the case on Friday night against either Missouri or Texas A&M, so you have to take that approach.
“I do think the experience of our team having been there a year ago, I think that’s shown throughout the season. We won four games, I think, in overtime in the league this year and I do think that has to do with the fact that we had five seniors and some experience.”
One of those five seniors, first-team All-SEC guard Samir Doughty, has a message to pass on to Auburn’s younger and less experienced players.
“Just be locked in each and every day,” Doughty said. “Stay in the gym and just know that any team is capable of beating anyone in March. We’ve got to be mentally prepared for that and physically prepared for that, and just trust each other. Just trust each other, trust our teammates, trust what the coaches got for us that we scouted, and I feel like we’ll be able to win a lot of games."
Tip-off at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville is scheduled for Friday night at 6 p.m. CT on SEC Network. The SECT begins Wednesday night with Georgia playing Ole Miss and Vanderbilt playing Arkansas in the opening round.
Auburn’s side of the bracket includes No. 3 seed LSU, No. 6 seed South Carolina, No. 7 seed Texas A&M, No. 10 seed Missouri, No 11 seed Arkansas and No. 14 seed Vanderbilt.
