Every team in college basketball wants to be playing its best and getting hot in March.

For Auburn, that hasn’t quite been the case. The Tigers are 2-3 since the month began and have lost three of their last four games.

That included a 70-65 loss to Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference tournament semifinals, sending Auburn back home for four full days of prep before starting the NCAA tournament.

Pearl said Sunday that most of that time would be spent “working on ourselves,” something the Tigers don’t get as much time to do over the course of the season.

In that time, a few areas of needed improvement stood out. The first was defending without fouling, something that hurt Auburn against Tennessee and in many of its losses this season.

All-American forward Johni Broome attributed a lot of the problems to “petty fouls,” things the team can eliminate with more focus in-game.

“It’s the fouls where you push someone or you hold them on a screen or try to fight through a screen and you grab their jersey or hit their hand on a layup,“ Broome told reporters Wednesday. ”So, we just gotta cut that out and we’ll be perfectly fine.”

Auburn committed 21 fouls against Tennessee and the Vols shot 27 free throws, five more than the Tigers. Auburn’s free throw rate allowed ranks 317th out of 364 Division I teams and was something that contributed to last season’s upset loss to Yale.

“I think the majority of the team’s fouls came from either fatigue or lack of focus,” said Auburn center Dylan Cardwell. “If you watched our fouls against Tennessee, people were reaching in, were slapping down. They’re undisciplined fouls.”

Another thing that was addressed during the week was defensive tenacity, along with a general sense of urgency. That’s something starting point guard Denver Jones pointed out, saying it’s different from how it was earlier in the season.

Part of that sense of urgency comes from the losses Auburn suffered to end the season. Despite still earning the No. 1 overall seed, the Tigers no longer feel like the country’s team to beat, something that has changed over the past three weeks.

The urgency also comes from the simple fact that a loss would be the end of Auburn’s season. It would end the storied careers of players like Broome, Cardwell and Jones and turn what at times felt like the greatest Auburn season ever to a forever what-if.

That’s the ending that Auburn is trying to avoid and the preparation for Thursday’s tournament-opener against Alabama State was highlighted by that sense of urgency.

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m