How Auburn Builds on Historic Win, Avoids Disaster as SEC's "Most Dangerous Team" Looms

The Auburn Tigers are coming off their best performance of the season following their historic 76-67 win over No. 16 Florida on Saturday.

The victory marked Auburn’s first in Gainesville in nearly 30 years, as its last win at the O-Dome was in 1996. Head coach Steven Pearl said after the game that he believes it could very well be the best road win in program history, even despite all of the success Auburn basketball has seen in the last seven or eight years under his father’s regime.

“I really think that was our best road win since we’ve been at Auburn,” Pearl said on The Next Round Live earlier this week. “That road win is better than us going to Tuscaloosa last year, No. 1 vs. No. 2, just because we were supposed to win that game. We were not supposed to win on Saturday. We were 11-point (under)dogs, I think, and we won by nine points, so our guys did a great job of locking and beating a great team.”

However, while the game was certainly exciting and is being tagged as a “season-changing win” by many, the Tigers need to move forward from the past and fix their eyes on the upcoming tests against Texas and at Tennessee. The worst possible thing Auburn can do is to let the emotions flow over into its next few games, which would diminish all momentum if the Tigers were to fall on their home floor on Wednesday.

Texas presents an interesting matchup, as it sits at 3-4 in the SEC and holds a 12-8 overall record this season. The Longhorns have dropped two of their last three, most recently defeating Georgia after losing to Kentucky and Texas A&M, but they also beat Vanderbilt and Alabama (in T-Town), two of the most talented teams in the league, earlier this year.

“While I said Florida was the best team in our league, (Texas) is the most dangerous team in our league – and it’s not even close, in my opinion,” Pearl said at his press conference on Tuesday.

“They have three guards that can beat you on any given night that all do different things at a very, very high level,” Pearl continued. “They have beaten more top-25 teams than anyone in our conference with four top-25 wins. They have a top-10 offense nationally.”

Texas is led by Xavier transfer point guard Dailyn Swain, who leads the Longhorns in scoring (16.9 PPG), rebounding (7.1 RPG), assists (3.2 APG), and steals (1.9 SPG). Swain, who followed former Xavier head coach Sean Miller to the Lone Star State this season, stands at 6-foot-8, 220 pounds, even as a guard, and ranks second in the SEC in total field goal percentage (57.6 FG%).

The Longhorns’ other backcourt contributors consist of Tramon Mark and Jordan Pope, both of whom Auburn has seen before in previous years. After Wednesday night, Mark will have faced the Tigers in four consecutive seasons, as he played for Houston in 2022-23, Arkansas in 2023-24, and is now in his second campaign with Texas.

Mark is their third-leading-scorer with 13.8 points per game while Pope just trails the sixth-year Longhorn with 13.0 points per game. The Longhorns’ second-leading-scorer is sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis (15.1 PPG), who Auburn also faced last year in its exhibition matchup against FAU.

“They’re one of the best rebounding teams in college basketball. In their wins , they’re plus-16 in rebounds, and in their losses, they’re plus-1. We’ve got to have the same intention that we had against Florida as far as rebounding the basketball because they do a great job of going to get it,” Pearl said.

If Auburn is able to get the job done and handle Wednesday’s game the correct way emotionally, the Tigers will be in an excellent position when they travel to Knoxville on Saturday to take on the Tennessee Volunteers.

Wins over Texas and Tennessee would create considerable levels of optimism within both the fanbase and the locker room, as it would mean the Tigers enter the Iron Bowl of Basketball on Feb. 7 riding a five-game winning streak – Auburn does not play a midweek game between Tennessee and Alabama.

However, none of the exciting speculation can come to fruition if Texas comes into Neville Arena and beats Auburn on the Tigers’ home floor. If Auburn can capitalize and not be distracted by its historic victory over Florida last Saturday, Pearl and company will find themselves in a great position heading into their toughest stretch of the conference slate.