After losing a heartbreaker to Alabama in the Iron Bowl on Nov. 25 in Auburn’s regular-season finale, Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze was asked what his Year 1 vision was for the Tigers.

“I really didn’t have a vision for this year, other than to try to get us to a bowl game and improve us from week to week,” Freeze said.

Prior to this season, Freeze had been a first-year head coach five times dating back to his time as a high school coach at Briarcrest Christian School. And whether at Briarcrest Christian, Lambuth University, Arkansas State, Ole Miss or his most recent post at Liberty, Freeze led his team to the postseason in Year 1.

It’s an important milestone in Year 1.

“I think it’s huge,” Freeze said when asked about the importance of reaching bowl eligibility in Season 1. “

Truthfully this is a bit selfish to say probably, but the staff and I, everywhere we’ve been we’ve been able to do that in year one. I would like to keep that streak alive, and we have. More importantly for our seniors, for them to get to experience going out and experiencing the bowl and representing Auburn. Then for the extra practices for our young kids. I thought it was huge. It was an important step in us rebuilding.”

Freeze kept his streak alive as the Tigers finished an even 6-6 in the regular season, giving them just what they needed to go bowling — nothing more, nothing less.

Auburn will find out its bowl assignment Sunday afternoon sometime after the College Football Playoff is set.

But first, a look back: What were some of the biggest moments in Auburn’s postseason bowl game bid?

1. Dismantling Arkansas on the road

No surprises here. The game that gave Auburn win No. 6, allowing the Tigers to punch their ticket to a bowl game, comes in at No. 1 when looking at the biggest moments in Auburn’s road to the postseason.

Coming into the game at Arkansas, Auburn had yet to prove they could play anything close to a complete game on the road. But the Tigers went on to prove they could as they marched into Razorback Stadium and quickly sucked the life out of it with a dominating performance.

Auburn quarterback Payton Thorne and the Tigers’ offense scored on their first drive to take an early 7-0 lead, followed by the Auburn defense forcing Arkansas to go three-and-out and punt it away to end the Razorbacks’ first possession.

But that punt found the awaiting arms of Auburn returner Keionte Scott, who returned it 74-yards for an Auburn touchdown, stretching the Tigers lead out to 14-0 after less than five minutes of game clock had expired.

If you want to really get specific and pick the biggest play in Auburn’s road to a bowl game, Scott’s punt return for a touchdown might be the play to beat as players in Auburn’s locker room said that’s when they felt the game was unraveling out of control, but in their favor.

Auburn went on to sustain their success against Arkansas and put together a 48-10 win as Thorne threw three touchdown passes and rushed for another, while the Tigers’ defense added a quarterback to the “boneyard” after sacking Arkansas quarterback KJ Jefferson five times.

2. Squeaking out a road win against Cal in Week 2

Auburn’s come-from-behind 14-10 win from the hills of California in Week 2 felt like it meant very little at the time.

However, knowing what we know now about how the rest of the season would pan out, that Week 2 win was pivotal for Auburn’s bowl-game hopes as the funky, one-possession ball game easily could’ve gone the other way, meaning the Tigers might’ve finished the regular season without six wins.

There were a lot of oddities in that game in the hills of California.

Auburn committed four turnovers against Cal, making it nearly impossible for the offense to find any kind of rhythm — let alone the endzone.

After the Auburn defense forced Cal to return the favor and cough up the football, Thorne connected with wide receiver Jay Fair on a 13-yard touchdown pass to give the Tigers their first points of the night with 11:50 to play in the second quarter.

The Tigers went on to trail 10-7 at halftime.

And after a scoreless third quarter, Auburn entered the final 15 minutes of play trailing Cal by three points. And considering the Tigers’ offense hadn’t had any success in the first three quarters, it felt like the game could go sideways at any moment.

Instead, Thorne found tight end Rivaldo Fairweather on a 5-yard 50/50 ball in the back corner of the endzone to give Auburn a 14-10 advantage with 6:31 to play. That play, paired with the heroic efforts of linebacker Eugene Asante, who finished with 12 tackles, bolstered Auburn to escape the Pacific Coast with a 14-10 win.

Again, at the time, the win over the Golden Bears looked like a sloppy one the Tigers should try to put behind them quickly. But now, it appears much more significant.

Freeze was asked what he was most proud of from his first regular season on The Plains.

Among his answers was the fact that Auburn, at one point in the season, was on a four-game losing streak.

“I mean you lose four-straight games, and that thing could’ve gone a lot of different ways,” Freeze said Monday. “I thought they stayed engaged which shows our staff did a decent job of keeping them engaged.”

Between Sept. 23 and Oct. 21, the Tigers lost on the road to Texas A&M, at home to Georgia, on the road to LSU and at home to Ole Miss. It was an absolutely brutal stretch of games, no doubt. But some of the results were even more brutal as Auburn lost to Georgia and Ole Miss by just one possession.

And after a team goes so long without winning a football game, the pressure builds to simply snap the streak so players can see that they’ve got what it takes to be a winning program again.

For Auburn, that win finally came on Oct. 28 in a 27-13 win over Mississippi State from Jordan-Hare Stadium.

The Tigers outscored the Bulldogs 24-3 in the first half before being outscored in the second half.

“You hope that it gives us a lot of confidence and maybe a little swagger to go play with confidence on the road,” Freeze said after the win over Mississippi State. “It’s not easy at home, and it’s certainly not easy on the road. And we’ve got two games that obviously you look at and you think we can win ‘em. But as I know from being in this league before, you can also lose them. And your confidence is a huge, huge factor and key in that. And hopefully that’s what today did.”

The two games that followed Auburn’s win against Mississippi State were visits to Vanderbilt and Arkansas — games the Tigers went on to win by a combined score of 79-25.