Nearly three years have passed since Auburn last beat Arkansas.

It was Feb. 4, 2020 — a 79-76 overtime win in Fayetteville, Ark. To put that passage of time into perspective, we were still in a pre-pandemic world. Since that thriller at Bud Walton Arena, Bruce Pearl’s team has dropped three straight against Eric Musselman’s squad, with the last two matchups decided by a combined six points and last season’s resulting in another exhilarating overtime finish.

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No. 22 Auburn (11-3) will have a chance to snap that skid against No. 13 Arkansas (12-2) at Neville Arena on Saturday when the Tigers host the Razorbacks for a 7:30 p.m. top-25 showdown on SEC Network.

“Just beating them for the first time in, like, three years would be amazing,” said forward Chris Moore, one of two Arkansas natives on Auburn’s roster. “It would definitely make my New Year’s.”

More than that, of course, it would provide Auburn with a welcome resume boost after an uneven start to SEC play. The Tigers split their first two conference games — a close home win against Florida last week followed by a 12-point loss at Georgia on Wednesday — and are just 3-3 over the last month since their 8-0 start to the year. They’ve yet to earn a Quadrant 1 win this season, and Saturday’s visit from the Razorbacks will be their first opportunity to do so.

It’ll also be a chance for Auburn to retain its standing in the AP top 25. The Tigers have been ranked for 28 consecutive weeks, and a loss to the Razorbacks to cap a 0-2 week would surely snap that streak.

“As a team, we want to stay ranked, stay in that top 25,” said forward Allen Flanigan, the other Arkansas native on the Tigers’ roster. “It’s just taking this game as a big game. It is a big game. It’s everybody coming out and showing up to play.”

To beat a talented Arkansas team, Pearl knows Auburn must play better than it has over the last several weeks. Even without highly touted freshman Nick Smith Jr., who has missed nine of Arkansas’ 14 games this year, the Razorbacks have enough talent to still be a dangerous team and one of the top programs in nation this season.

Smith has been in California seeing a specialist regarding a knee injury and is expected to mis several more games for Arkansas, Musselman said this week.

“They’re a complete team,” Pearl said. “They’ve got pieces. They’ve got pieces without him. They’re really deep and they’re really talented, so if he was back for a few weeks and then integrated into the system and everything like that, they could be better. But they’ve played so long without him that they’ve got enough depth that it’s not that big, it hasn’t been that big a factor, yet. They might shoot it a little better, because he can really shoot it. He can really score going downhill.”

Even without Smith in the equation, Auburn faces a daunting challenge Saturday night at Neville Arena; the Razorbacks will be the best team the Tigers have played so far this season, and one of their strengths — transition scoring (13.79 fastbreak points per game) — has been an area that has caused issues for an Auburn team that has struggled with turnovers of late, averaging 13.9 per game (third-most in the SEC).

“Some of the things that are ailing us, are still kind of ailing us, and really sort of building to playing what will be the best team on our schedule so far, Arkansas,” Pearl said. “The things that are ailing us, obviously, are the turnovers. Turnovers are creating transition opportunities, and that’s really hard to overcome, especially when we’re not shooting it great…. Obviously, that’s going to be our big challenge—just taking care of the basketball and being able to get back and do a good job defensively.

Auburn does hold one considerable thing its in favor entering Saturday: homecourt advantage. Auburn has the nation’s fourth-longest active home winning streak currently, winning 26 consecutive games at Neville Arena, where the Tigers have not lost since Feb. 23, 2021, against Florida. The only schools with longer active home win streaks are Gonzaga (75), Kentucky (28) and Arizona (28).

“Everybody in the country knows that playing a road game at Auburn is as hard as anywhere in the country,” Musselman said. “Coach Pearl has done a great job of creating an environment. I know the last home game they had, I watched it on TV, and it looked like they had a great student turnout even though we all know it’s still a school break time. But yeah, that’s a really, really hard place to play, and the record tells you so. When you win that many games in a row, I mean, that’s why it’s one of the hardest buildings to win in in the country.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.