The Tigers were rewarded for their historic championship season as Auburn was selected as the No. 1 overall seed for the first time in program history in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. Bruce Pearl’s squad is headed to Lexington, KY to take on the winner of No. 16 seed Alabama State and No. 16 seed St. Francis.
It’s only the second time the program has been selected as a No. 1 seed, last achieving the mark in the 1999 tournament.
“We're very, very pleased to have been recognized as the this year's overall number one seed. We sort of feel like that makes us the regular season national champion, Pearl said. "It is a tournament sport and we're six wins away from winning our first national championship.”
Auburn is atop the South region and is followed by; No. 2 Michigan State, No. 3 Iowa State, No. 4 Texas A&M, No. 5 Michigan, No. 6 Ole Miss, No. 7 Marquette, No. 8 Louisville, No. 9 Creighton, No. 10 New Mexico, No. 11 San Diego State, No. 11 North Carolina, No. 12 UC San Diego, No. 13 Yale, No. 14 Lipscomb, No. 15 Bryant, No. 16 Alabama State and No. 16 Saint Francis.
The Tigers road to the Final Four in San Antonio, TX starts inside of Rupp Arena in Lexington, KY, for the Rounds of 64 and 32, and then State Farm Arena in Atlanta, for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight.
Pearl’s squad recorded a 28-5 record and 15-3 regular season conference record, good enough to be crowned the SEC’s regular season champions. Playing the program’s toughest non-conference schedule to date and running through a historic SEC, Auburn racked up 16 quad-one wins – which leads the nation.
Pearl’s squad sits at the No. 2 spot nationally in the NCAA’s NET metric system and ranks at No. 2 overall in the KenPom ratings.
In a season where the Tigers had been ranked No. 1 for eight straight weeks, Auburn matched program records with the 2021-22 squad with 15 SEC wins & 27 regular-season wins.
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Patrick is a junior from Auburn, Alabama, double majoring in journalism and marketing. He started with The Plainsman in the fall of 2022.
You can follow him on X (Twitter) at @patrickabingham
