It’s currently 38 degrees at 2 p.m. on Friday, 22 hours before tip-off, and students are already in line in tents outside Auburn Arena. When asked on Thursday about Saturday’s game against Kentucky, Bruce Pearl didn’t argue against the notion that it is huge. There is a No. 1 ranking at stake for the Tigers and an inside track to the SEC regular-season championship.

So, to say this is the biggest game in Auburn Arena history would not be hyperbolic. It’s massive. Humongous. Gigantic! No. 2 vs. No. 12. A dream January showdown. But let me say this: it won’t be the biggest game in the arena for long.

Nope, this fanbase has turned every matchup at 250 Beard-Eaves Court into the biggest show in town. Auburn has become smitten with this team, and that didn’t just start when they began winning. That started this fall, across the street at Jordan-Hare Stadium, when the squad showed up and supported the football Tigers. Always on the big screen, and sometimes shirtless, we saw Dylan Cardwell, Jabari Smith Jr. and the crew take in the atmosphere and, maybe without realizing it, bonding off the court.

When the Tigers take the court, they get a welcoming like a combination between The Beatles landing in America and, to be Stultz family-specific, how my sister, Lori, who was on the dance team at Kentucky, reacted when New Kids on the Block came to Lexington in the late 1980s. By the way, I’m sure she and my entire family of Big Blue fans and alumni will be more than graceful tomorrow, but I digress (again).

This is what Pearl has built and what this team has done to these fans. They’ve gone insane for a sport in which Auburn has little history. Of course, history was a topic brought up to Pearl during his press conference on Thursday. His response? Players are now coming to Auburn to make history. The Tigers made it in 2018 with the SEC regular-season championship. It continued in 2019 with the tournament title and trip to the Final Four. And, if the Tigers win on Saturday, another historic moment with the first-ever top ranking will likely come on Monday.

Oh, and there’s the little matter of winning the whole damn thing come April.

Yes, it helps that the opponent is Kentucky, but the atmosphere for a top battle like this would be the same had it been LSU, Florida or (can you imagine?) Alabama. The Wildcats have the history that Auburn is trying to get just a smidgen of.

So if you want to say this is the biggest game in Auburn Arena history, you are correct. But every time these Tigers now take the floor to a packed house, it becomes the next biggest game in the arena’s history. That’s what happens when historical things are occurring.

Kentucky is first. Oklahoma is next. Isn’t it great to be a part of this?