After A Week Of Freaking Out On Twitter, A Threat From Bo Jackson And A Bizarre Reasoning - Auburn Is No. 1 For The First Time Ever

Well there it is Auburn fans. It finally happened. You spent the entire week losing your shit on Twitter. From, well, mostly just memes to full on losing your mind, Jesse Newell changed his mind. I kind of wish he didn't. If he knew comedy or to get pageviews, he would have kept Auburn at 9 instead of moving them up to 5. The AP ranking is stupid, so just embrace it. The AP poll also means mostly nothing. But nonetheless he moves them up to 5 after beating Kentucky*

*Without TyTy Washington, which I'll never let down, until they play again in the SEC Tournament

Now I can't blame Newell too much. It's clear that Auburn is a top-5 team in the country and probably more top-3 right now. If you want to debate Arizona or Gonzaga fine. I'll listen. But Auburn has one loss right now and that was in double OT in November to UConn. Even Bruce Pearl had jokes about it. 

It's kind of ridiculous what Bruce Pearl has done at Auburn and his entire career. He often gets glossed over when we talk about great coaches in the game, but he is. I hate to admit it because he spent time at Tennessee and Auburn. But, fuck, he wins. He wins a lot. He did it at Milwaukee. He did it at Tennessee. He's doing it now at Auburn. Sweat included. He turned Auburn into one of the most rabid basketball fanbases. 

At the same time, Auburn being moved to No. 1 shows how wide open this year is. It feels a lot like 2014 or the 2020 Tournament we didn't get. So far we've had Auburn, Gonzaga, Duke, Purdue and Baylor all ranked at No. 1 this year. There's a good chance at some point we toss in another team or two. We're getting a mix of traditional teams (Gonzaga, Kentucky, Kansas, Duke), new teams (Baylor, Gonzaga) and old school good teams coming back around (Arizona) all in the mix. Then you can throw in the likes of Nova, UCLA, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Houston. It's awesome. It's what the sports needed after a couple years where it felt like only a couple of teams could win the title. 

If you're not watching college hoops yet, you're missing out. This is the part of the year people start to really tune in. Welcome, March is going to be awesome.