NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- With a loss to No. 25 Tennessee in the SEC tournament quarterfinals Thursday afternoon, Auburn (17-16) enters an uneasy 72 hours squarely on the NCAA tournament's bubble.
After squandering a 10-point lead in the game's final 10:26 in a 72-62 loss, Auburn coach Steven Pearl stumped hard for his team's inclusion in the NCAA tournament.
If Auburn's name is called, the Tigers would be the first at-large team in NCAA tournament history to get in with 16 losses. Pearl made clear that the strength of Auburn's schedule, which includes seven wins in Quad 1 and Quad 2 games, should deliver the program a bid.
"Our guys have some of the best wins in college basketball, and this team deserves to be in a tournament," Pearl said Thursday. "It's a team that can win games in the tournament, and I think they've done enough, ultimately, to have their name called on Selection Sunday."
Pearl acknowledged with a smile to ESPN that he had heard from someone on his staff about Miami University's loss -- its first of the season -- in the MAC tournament about an hour before Auburn's tip. Miami's loss to UMass could end up taking away an at-large bid from Auburn, as it pushes Miami to the at-large pool. And it again squared the two programs -- at least comparatively -- against each other.
Steven Pearl's father, former Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, created a few days of headlines earlier this month when he remarked that Miami would finish in the bottom half of some power leagues. When Miami lost Thursday, a spree of online predictions about Miami playing Auburn in the First Four began springing up.
When asked by ESPN on Thursday about potentially playing Miami in Dayton, Steven Pearl said: "I hope we do. It would mean that two very deserving teams made the tournament because they went 31-0, which is hard to do regardless of the schedule you play. Even only playing two Quad 2 games and no Quad 1s, but the fact of the matter is they lost to a Quad 4 team today."
(Bruce Pearl tweeted earlier Thursday that he thought Miami deserved to be in.)
Auburn and Miami have become the archetypes for jarringly different NCAA tournament résumés, the metric version of the enduring big vs. little dynamic that makes the NCAA tournament annually endearing. Though Auburn would have the most losses of an at-large team ever, Miami has no Quad 1 wins and just two Quad 2 wins. Miami's predictive metrics, including at No. 93 on KemPom.com, would likely make the RedHawks the lowest-ranked at-large team in the predictive metric era.
The strength of Auburn's argument lies in the program's strength of schedule, as the Tigers are 7-15 against Quad 1 and Quad 2 teams and have the country's No. 5 strength of schedule.
Auburn won against St. John's on a neutral floor and at home against North Carolina State in the nonconference and won at Florida and beat Kentucky and Arkansas at home. The Tigers also played four NET top 10 teams in the nonconference -- Houston, Michigan, Arizona and Purdue.
"If you don't take strength of schedule very seriously on a committee, then there's no reason to schedule a challenging nonconference schedule," Auburn athletic director John Cohen told ESPN. "When you put together a nonconference schedule, intent matters. And there's no question when you study our schedule, the intent was to play one of the most difficult schedules in college basketball."
Steven Pearl dove into his talking points during the pregame news conference at the SEC tournament, joking that he was going to "go on a rant" as it's "my job to fight for my team."
He mentioned six teams also on the bubble -- Texas, SMU, VCU, Miami (Ohio), Missouri and New Mexico -- and said: "We have more top 25 NET wins than everyone in that group, [except] Missouri, we have more top 50 wins than everyone in that group. We have two Top 25 road/neutral wins, which is more than everyone else on the bubble. We have more wins over the projected field than anyone else on the bubble."
Steven Pearl said that Auburn hasn't had any internal conversations about playing in the NIT.
"I have not because just if you look at our résumé and compare us with the rest of the teams in the bubble," Pearl said, "we deserve to be in the tournament."
