This is an opinion column.

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This was the magnum opus.

Auburn finishes the regular season with Alabama next Saturday, and that game will be a celebration for the Tigers, but the 94-78 victory against Kentucky was the masterpiece.

Kentucky is a team in transition, and 10th in the SEC, but it’s still Big Blue and it was still Rupp Arena.

Auburn hadn’t won there since 1988, but on this day, Saturday, March 1, 2025, 37 years later, coach Bruce Pearl and his No.1-ranked team won the SEC, a league of blood and bone ruled by one of the most ruthless teams the game has ever seen.

They turned off the lights at Kentucky.

They turned off the sound and brought out the fury at Alabama.

They slugged it out with Tennessee, and, unlike the Crimson Tide, outlasted the hard-hitting Volunteers.

No.1 Auburn, and its near perfect record of 27-2 overall and 15-1 in the SEC, has won everywhere this season except two places, Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium and Florida’s O’Connell Center. Those losses don’t detract from anything, though. They just mean the SEC and NCAA tournaments can still be about revenge for the best team in the country.

Not undisputed yet.

There is still work to do, and there is still bitterness between every breath, and these Tigers are ready. Because for all the historical greatness of this regular season, it was never about this championship. It was about the championship. It was about redemption in March. It was about winning the national title and cutting down the nets in San Antonio.

Johni Broome is the best player in the country, and Auburn has one of the most efficient offenses we’ve ever seen, but those things will mean nothing in the end if this team loses once again on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

The job isn’t done. Not by long sight. Not after Yale last March and all the money spent to keep this team together. For this team, the mission hasn’t even really started.

For history’s sake, though, it’s worth pausing for a beat or two and appreciating the moment.

The 2025 Auburn Tigers are one of the best teams in the history of the SEC, and Pearl, the architect, will certainly win national coach of the year. After this season, they might consider naming the award in his honor.

Auburn is conference champion of the toughest league the game of college basketball has seen since the glory days of the Big East. Maybe ever. We’ll know in April.

How do you beat this team? Hope for a meltdown from Chad Baker-Mazara. That’s the scouting report and that might be it.

Of all the numbers we can name off about this group, there are two that stand out to put this season in perspective.

Auburn has 16 Quad 1 wins with two more left on the regular-season schedule. In 2024, eventual national champ UConn didn’t have 16 until it reached the Final Four.

The best college team I ever covered was the 2007 Florida Gators. This Auburn team will be in that conversation if it wins the SEC and NCAA tournaments. The 07 Gators, coached by Billy Donovan and featuring a host of future NBA stars, had five players who averaged at least 10 points per game. This Auburn team has six.

But defense was the true identity of those historic Gators, and so it is with this, the greatest team in the history of Auburn basketball. They blew teams out with their offense, but they won the close ones, too.

Poor Kentucky couldn’t even get off shots to start the second half. In their own barn, with all of their fans behind them, the Cats were so overwhelmed with Auburn’s defense that they couldn’t even shoot the ball. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Kentucky had six turnovers in the first three minutes of the second half.

That’s how a team leaves no doubt.

That’s how an all-time squad becomes the stuff of legend.

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Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”