Wendell Green Jr. grew sick of the close losses Auburn has endured this season. There have been seven of them in all this season by single digits, including five of them by five points or fewer.

It was tiresome for the Tigers as those nail-biting endings kept tilting in their opponents’ favor, with late-game execution leaving something to be desired for Bruce Pearl’s team. On Wednesday night against Ole Miss, however, Auburn bucked that trend and came out on top in one of those close games down the stretch. The Tigers’ 78-74 win against the Rebels was their first victory in a tight game in more than a month, since their Jan. 14 win against Mississippi State at Neville Arena.

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“It felt good to pull one out and finish the game in the last four minutes,” senior Allen Flanigan said. “That’s what we’ve been struggling with these last few games — just finishing it out in the last four minutes. To pull one out, it felt good.”

It was a game Auburn needed to win; a loss at home to the Rebels would have been brutal for the Tigers’ NCAA Tournament hopes. It was also the final game before a brutal three-game stretch to close out the regular season for Pearl’s team — a stretch that begins Saturday against Kentucky (19-9, 10-5 SEC) at Rupp Arena (3 p.m. on CBS).

Auburn’s final three regular-season games are all Quadrant 1 opportunities for the Tigers: at Kentucky, at No. 2 Alabama next Wednesday and then at home against No. 11 Tennessee in the regular-season finale next Saturday. While the Tigers (19-9, 9-6) are in pretty good shape to make the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in the last five postseasons, winning at least one of those final three daunting matchups will have Pearl and his team breathing easier come Selection Sunday, regardless of how the SEC Tournament plays out.

“We all know the pressure is on us,” senior guard Zep Jasper said. “Out of all of the teams in the SEC, you would probably say Auburn (has the most pressure); they have got Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee. So, it is like you have got to get at least one win out of these three.”

Auburn is currently projected as a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament, according to the Bracket Matrix composite, which takes into account projections from 83 different experts across the country. According to Bart Torvik’s T-Rank, Auburn currently has an 87.7 percent chance to make the field of 68. Winning at least one of the final three games against top-tier competition should all but shore up Auburn’s spot in the Big Dance, with a chance to even move up a seeding line or two if Pearl’s team can steal multiple wins during the season’s final eight days.

Though Auburn could still feasibly make the field without a win in one of those three games, losing out would certainly put the Tigers squarely on the bubble heading into Selection Sunday.

That first opportunity to solidify that postseason appearance comes Saturday at Rupp Arena, where Auburn hasn’t won since 1988, against a Kentucky team that has hit its stride late in the season. John Calipari’s team has won three in a row, all against Quad 1 competition, including a win last weekend against Tennessee to complete a season sweep of the Vols.

While Auburn’s track record at Rupp Arena hasn’t been great historically, Pearl isn’t about to give his team the full-on “Hoosiers” rallying speech, as the Tigers have generally matched up well against the Wildcats in recent years. Auburn has won four of the last six in the series, a fact that Pearl had reminded his team of this week.

“We talk about the fact that we haven’t won there in 35 years, but also remind them we’ve beaten them in four of the last six,” Pearl said. “I want them to have the confidence from the standpoint that we respect Kentucky, respect their history, and I’m very proud that we’ve been competitive with Kentucky. That’s what you got to do when you’re in the SEC. It’s like you’re playing football in the SEC, you got to be competitive with Auburn and Alabama and Georgia; the best teams in the SEC are those three teams. In basketball, you got to be competitive with Kentucky.”

That’s what Auburn has been able to do over the last several seasons, beginning with the program’s memorable overtime victory against Kentucky in the 2019 Elite Eight to punch the Tigers’ first-ever ticket to the Final Four.

While most of Auburn’s success against Kentucky has come at Neville Arena, the Tigers are hopeful their defense can carry them to a rare win at Rupp Arena, where they’re just 2-47 all-time. Auburn is confident that if it can hold Kentucky to fewer than 70 points on its home floor, it can head home with another Quad 1 win — and some breathing room when it comes to a postseason bid. The Wildcats have averaged 67.3 points per game in their nine losses this season.

“It is going to take a lot,” Jasper said. “Kentucky has been one of those teams they have counted out, but I look at Kentucky as one of the best teams in the conference. No matter how many games they have lost this year, they are still one of the best teams in the conference…. As a team we have to player harder, we have got to play tougher. It is just one of those games we have to win.”

Not only will a win push Auburn one step closer to shoring up an NCAA Tournament berth and give the program back-to-back 20-win seasons, but it will nudge the Tigers closer to position for a potential double-bye in the SEC Tournament. Auburn enters the weekend tied with Tennessee for fourth in the SEC standings, with Alabama, Texas A&M and Kentucky above them in the standings.

“So, here we are kind of in the thick of it,” Pearl said. “At the same time, we look at our schedule, and we’ve got to go to Kentucky and go to Alabama and finish up with Tennessee at home. So, we’ve got a tough row to hoe.”

As Pearl said after the Ole Miss win: If Auburn is sick of losing and fading down the stretch, the Tigers need to do something about it.

Now’s their chance.

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