AUBURN — Auburn basketball's 15-point win over LSU could've been a whole lot better.

The Tigers, who at one point in the second half were up by as many as 28 points, somewhat fell asleep at the wheel in the closing 20 minutes. The Bayou Bengals never got closer than nine points, but a huge 21-2 run makes the final margin not exactly indicative of how well Auburn played, especially in the first half.

Chad Baker-Mazara shined with a season-high 19 points, and he added five steals to go along with it. Dylan Cardwell stuffed the stat sheet with five points, six rebounds and five blocks. Johni Broome quietly crept up to 18 points, and Auburn had its best performance from the foul line in years.

But the bottom line is that coach Bruce Pearl's team won. The Tigers were ranked No. 16 in the latest AP Top 25 Poll released Monday, leaping up nine spots from No. 25 the previous week. Before that, Auburn was unranked to start the season and remained that way until it ripped off five straight nonconference wins by an average of nearly 25 points.

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Eight teams ranked ahead of the Tigers have lost since the latest rankings dropped, including No. 2 Houston dropping a pair of road games at Iowa State on Tuesday and at TCU on Saturday. No. 1 Purdue slipped against Nebraska. No. 3 Kansas lost to Central Florida. No. 5 Tennessee couldn't escape Mississippi State.

The list goes on and on. In a week that saw a rash of upsets, Auburn's couple of victories over Texas A&M and LSU shouldn't be taken for granted. That's especially true in the SEC, a conference that's grown into a basketball powerhouse that rivals the likes of the Big 12 and the Big East.

Kentucky lost Saturday to Texas A&M, a team the Tigers beat by double digits. The Vols were lucky to leave Georgia with a victory, as it took a Herculean effort from Northern Colorado transfer Dalton Knecht to get Tennessee out of Stegeman Coliseum.

It's a tough conference. Wins are valuable, no matter how they come.

"We’re probably going to continue to move in the rankings because it’s conference play and people are going to lose," Pearl said postgame. "I don’t think we’re the 16th-best team in the country right now. I think there are more than 16 teams better than we are.

"We are better than what they thought, but we’re not as good as they now think we are."

Whether Pearl likes it or not, the clout and positive bumps in the rankings will continue to come. It's inevitable as long as the Tigers keep handling their business.

Richard Silva is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at rsilva@gannett.com or on Twitter @rich_silva18.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Why Auburn basketball's 15-point win shouldn't be taken for granted