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I was wrong to assume that Auburn had peaked too soon. Dead wrong.
I didn’t realize that fully until Johni Broome returned from what appeared to be a serious wrist injury, only to drain a 3 in what felt like an emotional dagger to sink Michigan State in the Elite Eight. When the All-American went down, I wondered if Michigan State had a window to rally back from yet another double-digit deficit and deliver what would be a devastating collapse for Auburn. Dare I say, it could’ve potentially been a microcosm for the season it had.
That would’ve been the storyline had the No. 1 overall seed failed to reach the Final Four, especially after all 3 other 1-seeds punched their tickets to San Antonio. Those 16 Quad 1 wins would’ve been an afterthought.
Nope. Wrong.
Wrong, I was, to doubt Auburn’s ability to reach its second Final Four in program history. And for what it’s worth, I’m not just referring to my bracket, which had Auburn losing to Michigan in the Sweet 16. When I re-picked the field after the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament, I doubled down on that upset because of Michigan’s ability to match Auburn’s size, and outside of those final 10 minutes against Creighton, it wasn’t a stellar opening weekend for the Tigers. I felt vindicated when Michigan raced out to a 9-point lead that put Auburn’s season on the brink in the middle of the second half … which was short-lived.
Auburn is the complete package. You don’t reach this place without being just that. But even a complete team can succumb to the ways of March. Maybe a Chad Baker-Mazara incident could’ve happened at the worst time, just as it did last year in the upset loss against Yale. Maybe Auburn’s confident guards could’ve played sloppy, undisciplined ball like it did 3 years ago when it lost as a 1-seed in the Round of 32 to Miami. Shoot, maybe Broome could’ve just looked limited like he was at times down the stretch.
Auburn could’ve been another March casualty. Instead, it’s a force that could prove to be an immovable object.
Florida is the team that’ll be tasked with knocking off Auburn, which it was able to do before the Tigers clinched the SEC regular-season title. That was the only team that beat Auburn when it looked like the best version of itself from Dec. 8 through February. We’ll have time to discuss whether that matters, or if the Tigers are destined for a rematch against Duke in the national championship, where an SEC team will be represented for the first time since 2014.
But Sunday was all about showing doubters — like me — that Auburn was more than an elite regular-season team. To win in the postseason, little things matter. It mattered that Auburn only turned the ball over 6 times against one of the nation’s top defenses. Credit Denver Jones, Miles Kelly and Tahaad Pettiford for navigating that and preventing the Spartans from letting their defense fuel another comeback. Things like a Dylan Cardwell tip-out leading to a second-chance 3-pointer added up, as did the fact that Baker-Mazara didn’t let a negative shooting night impact his ability to facilitate in Auburn’s half-court offense.
Of course, the big things mattered, too. Specifically, Broome mattered.
Part of the reason that it felt fair to have some lingering doubt about Auburn after the early rounds was because of how little the offense worked through him. The touch was still there, but finishing through contact and making the right play off double-teams — 2 things he did at an All-American level for most of the regular season — felt like they were lacking. It didn’t help that he shot 4-for-11 from the free-throw line and that he was 0-for-7 from 3-point range during the opening weekend.
A 22-point, 16-rebound performance against Michigan in the Sweet 16 made that a distant memory. The “Johni Broome doesn’t look like himself” take that I might’ve said leading up to the Sweet 16 aged even worse with his 25-point, 14-rebound performance against Michigan State on Sunday. All weekend, it looked like the healthiest version of Broome, which is a wild thing to say considering his awkward-looking injury happened halfway through the second half. It initially appeared that Broome said to a teammate “I’m done” as he walked off the court favoring that wrist.
So naturally, coming back 5 minutes later after negative X-rays and making a 3-pointer nearly exploded the roof at the State Farm Arena, AKA Neville Arena East.
There are emotional swings, and then there’s whatever that was. Auburn has become plenty familiar with that lately. That’s fine. If they were going to cut down any nets in this tournament — either in a Regional Final or in San Antonio — there were going to be ebbs and flows. The 2023-24 UConns of the world are few and far between.
We still have time to figure out how 2024-25 Auburn will be remembered. Even if it can’t avenge that Florida loss, it’ll be remembered for getting the program back to the Final Four stage that it finally reached in 2019. It already broke the school record for wins in a season (32) during the NCAA Tournament, and if it can get to a national title for the first time ever, it’ll be one of the most impressive SEC teams of the 21st century.
We’ve never seen a team win a national title after losing 3 of 4 games entering the NCAA Tournament. Auburn has all the pieces necessary to become the first to do so.
At this point, only a fool would doubt that.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
