By David Ching, special to AL.com
Auburn is not the only SEC basketball team this season to sidestep its tradition of failure. Mississippi State's women have smashed their program's historical mediocrity even more decisively.
Auburn men's hoops and Mississippi State women's hoops rank among the SEC's least successful programs in any of the major sports (football, baseball and men's and women's basketball). But in 2017-18, the Lady Bulldogs did the Tigers one better in their chase for a conference title.
No. 2 Mississippi State not only claimed the school's first SEC championship in any women's sport, it also enters this week's conference tournament with a 30-0 record after becoming the first SEC team since Tennessee in 1997-98 to complete a perfect regular season.