Still tied to his hat was a piece of the net from Auburn basketball’s SEC championship win over Florida, which happened just hours before Sunday evening’s March Madness Selection Show on ESPN.

However, the high of Sunday’s win only lasted so long as Auburn learned its NCAA Tournament draw wouldn’t be a favorable one.

Given the fourth seed in the East Region, Auburn drew an opening-round matchup with 13th-seeded Yale.

The catch? Auburn would be sent 2,500 miles away to Spokane, Wash. for the matchup.

And while that’s nothing the Tigers were thrilled about considering it’s a tough trip for Auburn fans to make, that’s not the biggest gripe.

Instead, it’s the fact that Auburn had just won three straight games in the SEC Tournament, collected the tournament title, finished tied for second in the regular season and is ranked as the fourth-best team by KenPom, but still managed to only be a four seed in the the NCAA Tournament.

“The SEC Tournament doesn’t mean a damn thing if you can win three straight games and win the SEC championship and be a four seed,” Auburn associate head coach Steven Pearl said Sunday evening in an interview with The Next Round. “It’s a joke, honestly.”

As of Sunday morning, before Auburn’s title-winning performance against Florida, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had bumped the Tigers from a four seed to a third seed. And certainly, Auburn’s win over Florida would’ve only strengthened that belief.

But Lunardi isn’t the NCAA selection committee, which Pearl believes had its mind made up well before the Tigers took to Nashville for the SEC Tournament.

“They made their mind up before we got to the SEC Tournament,” Pearl said of the committee. “So it makes it really hard for us as coaches to find a way to tell our guys… Obviously it’s amazing to have a championship, but it doesn’t do anything for our team to show up and win three games in three days if we’re not going to be rewarded for it. We get shipped out to Spokane, Washington and have to play in that game.”

Pearl’s intent wasn’t to undermine or discredit the SEC Championship Auburn won Sunday.

“That’s an amazing accomplishment,” Pearl said. “But now we’ve gotta obviously get ready and be excited to go all the way across the country and play a couple of games.”

In Auburn’s first game of the tournament, the Tigers will see Yale on Friday.

Should Auburn advance, it’ll see the winner of San Diego State and UAB on March 24.