Will the real Auburn Tigers please stand up?

Doubt Us.

That's what the shirt says.

You know, those shooting shirts that shoe companies distribute to their basketball schools playing in the postseason.

The shirts Auburn is wearing, in its last ride with Under Armour before switching to Nike, bear that simple two-word message.

Doubt Us.

After watching the Tigers ghost their way through their first-round NCAA Tournament game against Alabama State as if it were a preseason scrimmage, they should exit the locker room before Saturday's Round 2 meeting with Creighton with new gear with a new message.

Mission Accomplished.

Because now everyone's doubting Auburn. Including Auburn. More on the internal discord and disgust in a moment.

The tournament's No. 1 overall seed is now the No. 1 seed most likely to exit the premises. The best team in the best conference known to man in January and February opened March Madness with the worst collective effort at the worst time.

Paging Johni Broome and Chad Baker-Mazara. Broome and Baker-Mazara to the white courtesy phone. Associate head coach Steven Pearl would like to have a word with you, and the word is "embarrassing."

"It was embarrassing, honestly," the younger Pearl said of the team's low-T energy in one of the most extraordinary - and extraordinarily honest - postgame interviews on a home-team radio network.

Of Broome, the national player of the year, and Baker-Mazara, the national lightning rod of the year, Pearl said, "They didn't bring it tonight, and I have no idea why. No idea."

If the head coach's son and right-hand man doesn't understand it, imagine how perplexed the rest of us are, especially those of us who expected to see Auburn flex on overmatched Alabama State from the jump and announce its return to beast mode with authority. You have an added responsibility as the top overall seed when you've lost three of your last four games, your No. 1 AP ranking and a significant amount of your swagger.

Instead the Hornets took the fight to the Tigers and almost took the lead late in the first half without doing anything extraordinary beyond pouring everything they had into the challenge. All credit to State coach Tony Madlock, the former Auburn assistant. His players took the game seriously.

Not everyone in an Auburn jersey can say the same.

Not even one year after Yale 78, Auburn 76.

That game may have been the most embarrassing NCAA Tournament non-performance in Auburn history. This game just made the list.

So what now? Now comes Creighton, which may have delivered the most impressive performance of the eight teams that played four games Thursday in Lexington. Given the opponent and the location, Creighton's thorough 89-75 takedown of Louisville sparkled even more than Tennessee's workmanlike 77-62 dispatch of Wofford and UCLA's 72-47 dismantling of Utah State.

Creighton is good enough to beat Auburn. Creighton will beat Auburn if Auburn's leaders decide to sleep-walk again. Creighton has a problematic 7-footer in Ryan Kalkbrenner who can shoot from the perimeter, a masterful point guard in Steven Ashworth and an explosive scorer in Jamiya Neal who dropped 29 points on Louisville.

Creighton was the No. 2 team in the Big East behind St. John's, but the Blue Jays look more frightening than they actually are because their tournament debut was so much more on point than Auburn's. They've lost 10 games overall, including a visit to Alabama (83-75) and a neutral-site meeting with Texas A&M (77-73).

Creighton is not good enough to beat Auburn if Auburn is crashing the boards and hitting the floor, locking in on defense and at the free-throw line, getting maximum effort from its veterans Broome and CBM while watching Miles Kelly shoot out the rest of Rupp Arena's lights. There aren't many left given that he's 16 of 29 from the arc in two games there this month.

If that Auburn shows up Saturday, with Denver Jones and Dylan Cardwell leading by example and Tahaad Pettiford and Chaney Johnson returning to form as they did Thursday, the Tigers will move on to the Sweet 16 in Atlanta. The problem is, that Auburn hasn't shown up for every game in March.

This is March. In case they needed a reminder, they got it from Alabama State. They got it from Steven Pearl. They also got it from Cardwell, their minister of culture, who offered a milder but no less pointed rebuke on postgame radio.

"I don’t want to look back when I’m 40, 50, 60, and be like, 'Dang, I wish I would have gotten past the first weekend. I wish I would have played in the Final Four.' We’re a great team, one of the greatest teams in the country. That’s why we’re the No. 1 seed. We aren’t playing like that anymore.

"I don’t know what it’s going to take to get there. We can have all the kumbayas, prayer meetings, all these things, but what’s it going to take for somebody to buy in?"

If the man who's won more games in an Auburn uniform than anyone in program history has to ask that question after 34 games, 29 victories, an SEC regular-season title and the No. 1 overall NCAA Tournament seed, we have to ask this one:

Will the real Auburn Tigers please stand up?