Auburn watched its SEC title hopes all but end earlier this week at Tennessee, but still has a double-bye in the SEC Tournament to play for over the final three games of the season. In the first of those, No. 11 Auburn pulled away for good late in a 78-63 win Saturday at home against Mississippi State.

Auburn is now 22-7 on the season and 11-5 in SEC play.

The win avenges a 64-58 loss to Mississippi State in January and finishes the season series with a 1-1 split.

Here are three takeaways from Auburn’s win.

Auburn keeps pace for a top-four SEC seed

All Auburn can control this point is winning its final three regular season games. Of the teams contending at the top of the SEC, Auburn’s three-game stretch starting with Mississippi State was the easiest. Auburn’s remaining games are a trip to Missouri and home finale against Georgia.

Two games back of the SEC this late in the year, Auburn’s hopes to win a league title are not gone, but highly unlikely. What’s still at play is a double-bye in Nashville for the SEC Tournament. Auburn currently is tied with Kentucky, which also won Saturday, for the final spot and Kentucky has the tiebreaker since it beat Auburn. South Carolina, one of the three teams above Auburn, already beat Florida earlier Saturday and the SEC’s top two teams — Tennessee and Alabama — play each other Saturday night.

Auburn will be two games back of the Alabama-Tennessee winner with two games still to play. It also needs Kentucky or South Carolina to lose a game in order to get a top-four seed. Auburn holds the tiebreaker over South Carolina.

All Auburn can control are the games that sit in front of them.

Off loss to Tennessee, Auburn started out hot

Head coach Bruce Pearl described Auburn’s loss to Tennessee as maybe its hardest to take of the season because of how it crushed hopes at realistically winning the SEC.

It would have been natural for Auburn to have a letdown performance against Mississippi State off the emotions of Wednesday night.

Nope. Not at all.

Auburn started out on fire. Especially on defense.

Auburn held Mississippi State to making just two of its first 19 shots. That included a streak of 12 consecutive misses. Mississippi State also had 10 first-half turnovers. The Bulldogs finished the first half shooting 27%.

It’s why Auburn outscored Mississippi State 20-7 over the first nine minutes and pulled out to a lead as large as 19 in the first half.

Auburn also made eight of its first 13 shots and 54.8% of all its shots in the first half.

That’s the kickstart a team looking to rebound needed.

The same intensity was lacking in the second half

Take what went well in the first half. It was great Auburn defense and efficient shooting.

It flipped right around the other way.

Mississippi State won the second half 41-39 and shot better than 50%.

Just as Auburn struggled rebounding against Mississippi State in Starkville, it struggled again on its home floor. And its teams that can rebound well that have consistently given Auburn a hard time at home this season: Texas A&M, Kentucky and now Mississippi State.

For the game, Mississippi State out-rebounded Auburn 36-30, and that’s after Auburn closed the gap in the final quarter of the game.

That included 14 Bulldogs offensive rebounds to eight for the Tigers.

Couple that with a Bulldogs offense that shot better than 70% from the field for the first eight minutes of the first half and find what was trending toward one of Auburn’s many Neville Arena blowouts turn into a more stressful game. Auburn let its lead slip to single digits before truly pulling away in the final quarter of the game.

Auburn has had second halves at home like this where it regressed after taking a big halftime lead. But it’s in a position where those second-half discrepancies never hurt Auburn.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]