Alabama vs. Auburn is a rivalry of elites – in basketball, not football

This holiday week, sad images come to mind of an Auburn fan watching Iron Bowl hype videos, an Alabama fan making fun of Kalen DeBoer on one of his favorite message boards.

And in both cases, ignorance of the best thing about being an Auburn or Alabama fan right now: men’s basketball teams that are good enough to play each other for a national championship.

Don’t watch flickering footage of football games that actually mattered in years past – watch again as Auburn raced through Iowa State, North Carolina and Memphis to win the Maui Invitational. Don’t waste time complaining about your new football coach – send a shout-out to the basketball coach who just reached the school’s first Final Four and followed that up with a better team this fall.

Of course, most people understand this and can multitask. The Iron Bowl will always loom large in college football, always capable of creating indelible moments and captivating an entire state on Saturday. But the contrast is something very special this year, isn’t it?

These may never be “basketball schools,” but their men’s basketball programs are currently elite and designed to remain so, and their collective power rivals any moment in their collective football history. Bruce Pearl’s No. 4 Tigers are 7-0 after the win over Maui, which included a classic over No. 5 Iowa State (83-81) and subsequent losses to No. 12 North Carolina and upstart Memphis by a total of 27 points.

Any poll voter who took their eyes off the plate long enough to see a few baskets during Feast Week will surely put Auburn at No. 1. With all due respect to current leader Kansas and its win over Duke, Auburn has the strongest record – it includes a win over No. 6 Houston in Houston after two Pearl players argued on the plane (!) – and plays the best basketball .

Auburn also has its best player, senior tall Johni Broome, the all-time favorite for national player of the year honors. Read more from here The athlete‘s Brendan Marks on Broome and the integrity of this team after covering their run in Maui. The Tigers are “good for the national championship,” ESPN’s Jay Williams said during the network’s coverage of the run.

In this way, basketball fills a timely gap that was created by poor football on the Plains. Pearl gave Auburn its first Final Four in 2019 and has produced two SEC regular season championships and two SEC tournament titles since 2018. Auburn had the same total number of SEC championships in its entire history prior to Pearl, four.

The Tigers were good enough to win the national title last season, but were defeated by Yale in March Madness. It happens. But it had to be harder to take when Nate Oats coached Alabama to the first Final Four in its history.

It ended five years of Auburn fans having something meaningful to hold over the heads of Alabama fans, and it continued Oats’ tireless redefinition of the program’s possibilities. This is the sixth season his teams have combined math and art – relying on the 3-point shot, playing fun basketball and winning a lot.

This team, led by Mark Sears, has already picked up neutral victories against Houston, Illinois and Rutgers, as well as its fabulous freshmen. It lost at Purdue, but there aren’t many teams that play true road games like this in November. Alabama’s preseason No. 2 ranking was no mistake.

Nate Oats led Alabama to the program’s first Final Four last season. (Kirby Lee/Imagn Images)

These programs have contributed to the renaissance of SEC basketball. A stale goo-goo cluster of a product from eight years ago now serves tiramisu. Tennessee — undefeated and No. 2 in KenPom behind Auburn — and Florida are two other “football schools” with better basketball programs.

And this season, with all due respect to the Blues, Auburn and Alabama might actually have the two best teams in the sport.

Then there is football. They have 5-6 Auburn, fresh off a home upset against Texas A&M in a two-point loss that inspired field rushing, and looking for a road upset to sneak into a bowl game. They’re 8-3 Alabama, fresh off a surprising 24-3 loss at Oklahoma, needing a blowout win and a lot of help to sneak into the top 12 of the College Football Playoff.

DeBoer’s Crimson Tide may get the win, but probably won’t make the field, and that was unthinkable early in the season.

These are trainers at different stages of the fight, facing different challenges, early in their tenure but still in the fight. Hugh Freeze has been a disappointment in two seasons for a program that is on the verge of finishing unranked for a fifth straight season. The last time this happened at Auburn? A nine-year season from 1944 to 1952, coached by Carl Voyles, Earl Brown and Ralph Jordan.

Freeze deserves time to prove he can train them like he used to and stabilize a program drunk on volatility. DeBoer deserves time to prove that he wasn’t crazy when he agreed to follow Nick Saban and that he won’t undo all of Saban’s work in making this the greatest dynasty in the history of sports.

It’s an interesting first meeting between these two. The Iron Bowl is always interesting. But do you know what it doesn’t have? A five-star freshman quarterback who moved from one rival to another while taking shots at his former coach.

Auburn 2023-24 Freshman Point Guard Aden Holloway is a sophomore point guard at Alabama in 2024-25, and when he exited the transfer portal he said, “I was kind of sold a dream by Pearl.”

So do your thing on Saturday, Alabama and Auburn fans. Just save some juice for February 15th and March 8th. You know what happens these days, right?

(Top photo: Marco Garcia / Imagn Images)