Auburn @ LSU Game Thread

Because of the opening of Alex Box, I never did an Auburn preview.  Auburn suffers from insufficient talent, but they work hard and they're well coached.  They're also hot right now.  Our magic number in the SEC is still at 3, as neither Tennessee nor Vandy were able to give us any help.  Bama helped us out by beating Mississippi State, which reduces our magic number over MSU to 1.  Technically, our magic number over Auburn is 2, but we can take care of that with a win tonight.

There are no guarantees here.  This is a team that beat MSU and beat Tennessee.  They are not bad at all.  They don't quite match up with us physically, and they don't have the size to take advantage of our weak interior defense.  But if they hit the 3s and get the offensive rebounds they tend to get, they can beat us.

People are saying we're running away with the SEC, but we only have a 3 game lead with 5 games to go.  If we don't win this one, we get Kentucky and Florida next week, and they're the two teams chasing us.  A win here and we get pretty safe, but if we LOSE, we could be in 3rd place in the SEC in a week if Kentucky and Florida both beat us.

**UPDATE** Nice win for the Tigers.  A little closer than we would have liked, but we get the win, and now we have clinched the West, and games against Kentucky and Florida can't hurt us much even if we lose.  More thoughts tomorrow.