College basketball rankings: Body of work keeps Auburn at No. 1 despite loss as Clemson joins Top 25 And 1

Auburn lost for the first time in 74 days on Saturday. That’s a fact. Now here’s another: if you’re a human with a brain you should still have Auburn No. 1 based on its incredible body of work.

(I am so I do.)

Yes, for the 33rd consecutive morning, Auburn is No. 1 in the CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings on this Sunday, even though the Tigers lost 90-81 to Florida on Saturday. And if you’re struggling to understand, it might be helpful, as I’ve suggested before, to think of Auburn as a golfer with like a four- or five-shot lead and these rankings as a golf tournament. Continuing with the analogy, Auburn bogeyed its last hole while some of the chasing teams parred or even birdied and definitely closed the gap. But, if this were a golf tournament, Auburn would still be comfortably ahead of the rest of the field. That’s why I’m keeping Bruce Pearl’s Tigers atop the Top 25 And 1.

By the way, I bounced all of this off of Jerry Palm.

Even before the weekend, I’d already decided Auburn was so far ahead of the field that it could take basically any loss and stay No. 1 in the Top 25 And 1, but I did text the man who projects brackets for CBS Sports just to see if my logic was sound. So I asked him if he planned to keep Auburn as his No. 1 overall seed even after the nine-point loss at home.

“Yes,” Palm texted back. “12 Quad 1 wins.”

That’s four more Q1 wins than anybody else in the country, and the Tigers’ 12-2 record in Q1 is just so much better than everybody else’s that there’s no way to justify anybody over Auburn right now unless you preface it by saying you just do not care about the bodies of work.

I, for one, do care about the bodies of work. And the bodies of work just are not close once you understand that Auburn is still 21-2 with a 12-2 record in Q1 even after the loss to Florida.

If you think there’s a better résumé out there, name it.

But it’s not Alabama’s (because the Crimson Tide are 20-3 with a 7-3 record in Q1). And it’s not Tennessee’s (because the Volunteers are 20-4 with an 8-4 record in Q1). And It’s not Duke’s (because the Blue Devils are 20-3 with a 5-3 record in Q1). And it’s not Florida’s (because the Gators are 20-3 with a 4-3 record in Q1).

Do I need to keep going?

Eventually, an entire body of work can start to be discounted by recent play — point being I might look at a team’s awesome entire body of work a little differently if that team loses, say, three of four with multiple defeats coming to unranked opponents (or something like that).

But this isn’t that.

All Auburn did Saturday is take a single-digit loss (to a top-10 team) to fall to 14-1 in its past 15 contests. Even after that single-digit loss (to a top-10 team), the Tigers would still so clearly be the No. 1 overall seed if the NCAA Tournament started today that I wouldn’t be comfortable trying to rationalize anything other than leaving Auburn atop the Top 25 And 1 heading into Tuesday’s game at Vanderbilt.