NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It’s not difficult to identify the turning point in Auburn’s season.

Throughout the year, Auburn experienced its fairly standard college basketball roller coaster.

The Tigers beat some perennial-power, non-conference opponents in Washington, Arizona and Xavier. They claimed a moral victory in Maui with a six-point loss to No. 1 Duke. But Auburn also fell on the road at N.C. State who finished the year one of the last team’s out of the tournament. It started conference play 2-4 and fought with near-.500 standing in SEC play for most of the season.

None of those moments, good or bad, forced Auburn into its current mindset, one that sparked a four-win-in-four-days run toward its first conference tournament championship since 1985.

But the Tigers know exactly when the moment did happen — Feb. 23, to be exact.

“Oh yeah, getting beat by 30,” Okeke said, breaking into a yeah-that-really-sucked laugh. “That was it right there. That was embarrassing, getting beat by 30. No team should ever beat us by 30. That’s how we felt.”

Auburn has been on a collision course with March ever since.

On Feb. 23, the Tigers traveled to Lexington, Ky., to take on Kentucky who had been one of the hottest teams in America. The Wildcats had stolen a win in Auburn Arena earlier in the season, and the Tigers were interested in some payback.

Bruce Pearl spoke to his team in the locker room before the game, and it was broadcast to the national CBS audience. The theme of Pearl’s message: If you think Auburn is a national-championship caliber team, this is the day to prove it.

The 40 minutes that followed couldn’t have deviated further from that plan. Okeke calls it a 30-point loss, but Auburn really only fell 80-53, a 27-point margin.

Either way, it was a gut punch. Perhaps, a necessary one.

“You know, when we went to Kentucky, they really hit us in the mouth. We just felt bad coming out of that game,” Okeke said. “But all we said was: Never again. We’re coming in and playing every team hard like it’s our last game. We all want to see our seniors go out on top, and that’s really about it.”

Since that blowout loss, Auburn has turned itself into one of the hottest teams in the country.

The Tigers haven’t lost since.

During the SEC Tournament, Bryce Brown was asked what flipped following the Kentucky loss. After all, the Tigers had rattled off eight-straight wins against most of the SEC — Georgia, Mississippi State, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee again. They did so in mostly convincing fashion, most notably the 20-point championship clincher in the rematch against the Volunteers.

Brown responded with surprise when reminded Kentucky was the last loss: “Oh really? Kentucky was the last loss?” he said when asked about the catalyst loss. Whether that’s Brown playing coy or expressing genuine mis-remembrance is up for interpretation.

But it represents the only-the-next-game-matters mentality most teams mention in press conferences, but something this Auburn basketball team has truly embraced.

“Everybody is focused. Everybody is focused on the grind, the same goal — just winning,” senior Horace Spencer said. “We know how bad losing can feel. I’ve been on a team when we win no games. We’ve lost by 30. We just have to embrace the brotherhood.”

Jared Harper admits he’s seen a team-mentality shift.

Surprisingly, however, he picks a slightly different date than Feb. 23.

He recognizes the Kentucky game as a wake-up call, but he saw a flip switch before that. Heading to Lexington, Auburn had rattled off two-straight wins to inch back toward the conference tournament double-bye conversation. The Kentucky game was meant to be a measuring stick, but PJ Washington & Co. — in perhaps Washington’s best performance of the season — got in the way.

As Okeke alluded to earlier, the mindset soon became: Never again.

“I think it actually changed a little bit before the Kentucky game. When we played at Kentucky, they just played really well. They played like the Final Four type team they are. I don’t think it was as much about how bad we played as how good they played. They’re a top team,” Harper said. “But it was a wake-up call. We just had put that behind us, knowing that we still had important games ahead of us and all we had to do was make plays. That’s exactly what we’ve done.”