If you wanted to point to one game to figure out how No. 12 Auburn went from playing in half-empty arenas, a parochial afterthought lost in college basketball’s shadowlands, to championship caliber program playing in a packed house of horrors, look no farther than Wednesday night’s 99-81 win over No. 16 Alabama.

Everything Bruce Pearl has built at a place that had won just 1 SEC championship in the league’s integration era prior to Pearl’s arrival was on display Wednesday night at Neville Arena.

You want a barrage of fast-paced offense and scoring?

Auburn eviscerated Alabama’s defense with constant straight line drives, setting up consistently open duck-ins and kick out jump shots. The Tigers averaged 1.3 points per possession on the evening, the second highest points per possession total allowed by an Alabama defense in 5 seasons under Nate Oats.

You want outstanding guard play?

Auburn’s guards tore Alabama apart by forcing the issue, drawing 33 fouls and shooting 50 free throws, the highest number of attempts in a game by a Power 6 team this season. Set aside Doug Shows jokes for a moment and consider that the book on Auburn under Pearl, rightly or wrongly, has been that they live or die by the 3.

This season, there’s been a bit of justice to that lazy statistical story, as entering Wednesday night’s game, Auburn had made just 5.8 3-pointers and shot just 24% from deep in its 4 losses. On Wednesday night, however, Auburn made only 5 3-pointers, and won by 18 anyway.

Look deeper and you’ll see that Pearl has built a team that doesn’t need to bomb you to beat you. On the contrary, Auburn shoots just 33% from deep this season (199th in the country). They rank 10th in Adjusted KenPom Efficiency regardless, thanks to city tough and quick guards in Aden Holloway, KD Johnson, Tre Donaldson and Denver Jones, who can all get downhill and attack.

If you have guards who can attack, you better have big men who can finish, and Auburn has the SEC’s best big man in center Johni Broome.

Broome was the best player on a floor of great players against Bama. The Auburn junior scored 24 points, grabbed 7 rebounds and posted 5 monstrous blocks, anchoring an Auburn defense that ranks 3rd in the country in efficiency, per KenPom.

Broome stretched Alabama’s defense to open driving lanes for the guards, and then he beat double teams when Alabama brought help to Grant Nelson, the smooth shooting big man who was too often overwhelmed by Broome’s physicality in the post.

The Tigers shoot 55% on 2-pointers this year, among the best figures in the country, thanks to their ability to live in the paint and their ability to finish when they get there. Auburn won the interior battle 40-26 with Broome (24 points), Jaylin Williams (26 points) leading the way, and that disparity would have been bigger but for all of Alabama’s fouls.

In a season where Auburn lacks a dominant 3-point shooter (or shooters), the Tigers have found other ways to win, riding a dominant big man to the top of the SEC standings. Following Wednesday night’s win, Broome is the 2nd-highest rated player from an efficiency standpoint in the country, behind only Purdue’s Zach Edey, and his dominance in both games with the talented Crimson Tide (Broome had 25 points, 14 rebounds and 5 blocks in Alabama’s win over Auburn last month) should make folks pause before they write in “Dalton Knecht” or “Mark Sears” into the one slot on their SEC Player of the Year ballots.

Make no mistake, Auburn looks different than the height-challenged, perimeter shooting happy group Pearl led to the Final Four in 2019, but this team is, to crib an Alabama football phrase, very much “Built by Bruce.”

Pearl is rightly known in basketball circles as an elite recruiter, but his ability as a talent evaluator and roster constructor often gets lost. This Auburn team is almost perfectly constructed for Pearl’s vision of pressure defense and high-tempo offense predicated on 3-level ball movement.

Broome is the All-American, the star wooed to Auburn by Pearl from the portal, the glue. Chad Baker-Mazara is another Pearl portal victory, plucked from a great program (San Diego State) to add defensive toughness and a big wing who can guard 5 positions. Aden Holloway is the classic city tough, fast guard who can break pressure and straight line drive a defense at will. Jaylin Williams is the veteran who is a testament to program development. Williams has worked to become a stretch four and improved his arsenal of post moves, becoming one of the best 2-point shooters in the country (69%, which ranks 21st nationally). Williams can also guard 4 spots, and run the floor impeccably, as he did on this building-shaking slam last night.

KD Johnson and Chris Moore are Williams’ fellow seniors who have accepted a role and just want to win, regardless of personal ambition.

Collectively, the group plays relentlessly, another Pearl staple.

“They just played harder than we did,” Oats said. “We fouled too much, because they beat us to spots on the floor. They were constantly in position. They played smarter and harder than us.”

That’s as succinct a summary as you’ll hear, and a fair one. Much of that has to do with the culture of accountability and effort Pearl has built at Auburn.

“If there’s one thing we will do, no matter what, it’s we will not get outworked, outhustled, overwhelmed by effort,” Pearl told me at SEC Media Day when I asked him about the culture at Auburn. “It’s not coach-speak. It’s an expectation. If you play for Auburn, you will play 40 minutes for Auburn as hard as you can.”

The Tigers do this especially well at Neville, a cauldron of sound and fury that has become one of the best home-court advantages in the sport.

This isn’t Chapel Hill or Lexington or Lawrence.

There’s no “Pay Heed, All Who Enter the Phog” sign in Neville, but there are loud, proud students right on top the opposing bench and, in an intimate venue where there isn’t a bad seat, there are 9,000-plus fans who are engaged from pregame warmups to the late game introduction of Auburn’s walk-ons, who enjoyed a moment in the Iron Bowl of hoops sun Wednesday night, with the game well in hand.

With Pearl leading them, Auburn has become a house of horrors, a big dot on the map of the college basketball universe.

This season, Auburn might just become SEC champion again, too.