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College basketball rankings: Auburn easily handles Bronny James and USC, looking like an SEC contender – CBS Sports
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I explained in Sunday’s update to the CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings why I believe Purdue should be No. 1 when the Associated Press Top 25 poll updates Monday. If you missed it, go check it out so that I don’t have to repeat myself and can instead use this space to focus on Auburn.
Did you see what Auburn did to USC?
The Tigers beat Bronny James and the Trojans 91-75 on Sunday to improve to 8-2 on the season. If not for Auburn coach Bruce Pearl scheduling a game at Appalachian State earlier this month that most high-major coaches would never schedule, Auburn would likely already be in the AP poll. But Pearl did schedule that game, and his Tigers lost it, so AP voters have largely ignored them.
Which is understandable.
The resume is still lacking a victory over a currently ranked team and does include that 69-64 loss to Appalachian State — plus the 88-82 season-opening loss to Baylor. That’s not a great body of work. But it should be noted that Auburn’s computer numbers are terrific across the board, in part because the Tigers are 4-0 against top-100 KenPom.com teams not named Baylor or Appalachian State with those four wins coming by an average of 19.5 points.
The Tigers have beaten Indiana by 28, St. Bonaventure and Virginia Tech by 17 each, and USC by 16. That’s enough for me to put Auburn 24th in Monday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 and 1.
Auburn has three more non-league games remaining — one against Alabama State (Friday), another against Chattanooga (Dec. 30) and the last against Penn (Jan. 2). All three will be played inside Neville Arena, where the Tigers are 34-2 in their past 36 contests. So, barring a surprise, Auburn will enter the SEC portion of its schedule with an 11-2 record and should be considered among the contenders to win the conference championship that Pearl has already won three times — once at Tennessee (2008), and two more times at Auburn (2018, 2022).
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