Auburn basketball has had time to reflect following Alabama’s game-winning basket to end the regular season on Saturday.

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl confirmed Wednesday that the team took the rest of the weekend off and began preparations for the SEC Tournament Monday.

“We took Sunday off, and we worked Monday, Tuesday, and now here Wednesday, just on us. We’ve just really been working on us.” Pearl said. “We know our first opponent is going to be Ole Miss or Arkansas, and so the coaches are quietly working on scouting reports for those teams.

“We’re not doing anything on the court or in film prior to when we find out who we play Thursday afternoon at 2:30, except just working on ourselves.”

Pearl compared being the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament to winning the national championship in the regular season.

Despite not being able to celebrate its regular season championship in front of Auburn fans postgame against Alabama, Pearl appreciated how they were acknowledged pregame.

“When our fans came to watch us play Alabama, I thought it was great. The athletic department just let all of our fans be a part of that championship by having a championship towel on every (seat). We’ve celebrated. We just didn’t cut down nets,” Pearl said.

In efforts to cut down the nets in Nashville, Auburn is taking the necessary time in the film room this week to clean up the flaws from its last two losses.

“There’s just going to be a lot of review. Like [Tuesday], we reviewed all of our side out of bounds situations. And [Wednesday], we’re going to go and review zone offenses. We may not see much zone or go against zone pressure. But all it is just a review of everything,” Pearl said.

“What happens is, we’ll get our opponent on 2:30 Thursday and we’ll be giving them a scouting report on either Ole Miss or Arkansas. And based on one of those opponents, we’ll be taking what we’ve been working on this week and plugging those things in.”

Even with what appears to be a guaranteed spot in the NCAA Tournament, the Tigers are motivated more than ever to bring home it’s third conference tournament title in the last six seasons.

“This team has demonstrated that they’re great competitors. They don’t want to lose. They don’t like losing, we don’t. They should have confidence going through the grind of what we’ve gone through,” Pearl said.

“We respect everybody that’s up there. It’ll be about matchups. No, we’re not at all bought into the theory of — next weekend is the more important weekend than this weekend; they’re both very important.”

Auburn’s SEC Tournament quarterfinal game against either Arkansas or Ole Miss is scheduled for noon Friday. The game will be televised on ESPN.

Jerry Humphrey III covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Jerryhump3 or email him at [email protected].