Auburn basketball: Against all odds, Bruce Pearl’s Tigers won the SEC

Auburn basketball found ways to win all season proving the doubters wrong time and time again.

Not even the most die-hard, sunshine-pumping Auburn basketball fanatic could have ever envisioned this. After Auburn’s last game of the regular season, a 79-70 win over a gritty Frank Martin coached South Carolina squad fresh off a Final Four run just a year ago, Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl was standing on a ladder underneath one of Auburn Arena’s basketball goals with a pair of scissors in hand.

The nets were likely already scorched from Bryce Brown’s hot hand from 3-point land as the Stone Mountain, Georgia native saved the best game of his career from beyond the arc for the last game of the regular season, arguably the single most important game for the Tiger basketball program in almost twenty years when Chris Porter’s high flying heroics helped lead Auburn (29-4, 14-2)  to an SEC regular season title in 1998-99.

And how fitting that the hero of the game was Brown, an unheralded recruit who Pearl signed in the Tigers 2015 recruiting class that garnered exactly one single Power 5 and SEC offer — from Auburn. Brown blistered the Gamecocks on 8 of 12 shooting from deep at a 66% clip en route to a game-high 29 points in leading Auburn (25-6, 13-5) to a share of the 2017-18 regular season SEC Championship.

And how fitting that Auburn’s last game of the regular season would have such high stakes in determining the Tigers SEC Championship fortune. And what better place to play that game as a reward for the loyal Tiger fans in ‘The Jungle’ that have helped make Auburn Arena suddenly one of the greatest college basketball atmospheres in all the country.

Bruce Pearl wouldn’t have had it any other way. After all, we have all been witnesses to the adversities and obstacles that have tried to plague this Auburn team.

Before the season even began, Auburn lost two uber-talented potential starters, Austin Wiley & Danjel Purifoy. The duo were relegated to seats on the Tiger bench for the duration of their sophomore seasons after a nationwide FBI investigation into the underbelly of NCAA basketball saw former assistant coach Chuck Person arrested and ultimately fired while two other basketball staffers were placed on administrative leaves of absence for their alleged roles in the federal investigation.

Auburn fans most lofty preseason expectations, which were seemingly just hopeful of making the NCAA tournament for the first time in fifteen years, all came crashing down that September day. After the news broke, even the most passionate Auburn fan concluded that the season ahead was a lost cause.

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Hope was lost, they said. And that might have been true for everyone not named Bruce Pearl and his resilient Auburn men’s basketball team, who had formed a brotherhood over the summer after a team trip to Europe. Pearl refused to allow his men to wallow in self-pity and instead used the heartbreak to motivate. While the naysayers increased by the minute, Auburn kept winning. And winning. And winning.

After completing its non-conference slate, Auburn stood at 12-1, but critics weren’t buying the Tigers early season success and predicted Auburn would fall apart to bigger, stronger, and deeper SEC teams. CBS Sports college basketball writer Kyle Boone even went as far as to predict that the Tigers would finish their SEC schedule with a 4-14 record. I can almost see Pearl smiling from ear to ear upon learning of Boone’s dire prophecy for Auburn’s upcoming SEC schedule.

While y’all be hatin’ Bruce Pearl be motivatin’.

Prior to Auburn’s first conference matchup, a road game in Knoxville versus a Tennessee (23-7, 13-5) team that Auburn would eventually share the SEC title with, Pearl assembled his squad at midcourt for a pregame pep talk. Pearl reminded his boys that it’s all about the walk and not the talk before sharing Boone’s prediction and revealing a navy blue Under Armour t-shirt with the numbers 4-14 in bold proudly displayed across his chest. Auburn vs. er’body.

Coincidentally, sophomore Mustapha Heron, the program’s first 5-Star recruit who was apart of Auburn’s historical 2016 class, asked Pearl if he could wear the 4-14 shirt in shoot-around before tipoff with the Volunteers. Pearl literally gave Heron the shirt off his back and despite going ironically 4 of 14 from the floor, Heron poured in 16 points while Bryce Brown and Jared Harper each had 18 to lead the Tigers back from an early 14 point deficit to a double digit SEC road win 94-84 over the Vols in the only head to head matchup of the season between the SEC co-champions.

Many Tiger fans will argue that Auburn should be the sole champion since the Tigers defeated Tennessee on their own home floor in Knoxville, but the Southeastern Conference rules dictate that if two teams finish with the exact same conference record, the head to head matchup only determines seeding of the SEC tournament, which tabs the Tigers #1 and the Vols #2.

Besides, co-champions are still champions and it gave the basketball world a chance to see Bruce Pearl at his finest as he posted a classy congratulatory tweet to the Tennessee basketball team saying he was proud to share the championship with such a worthy opponent.

The examples set by Bruce Pearl and his 2017-18 SEC Champion Auburn men’s basketball team far outweigh the outcome of any sporting event. They have taught us life lessons. Never allow what others say about you define what you believe about yourself. Bruce has reminded us that adversity reveals character. His team has shown us a resiliency unlike any other. These Tigers could have folded before the season even started after losing two of its best players. They could have hung their heads after losing one of their brothers to a season-ending injury when the SEC’s top shot blocker Anfernee McLemore went down.

Auburn could have listened to the naysayers who consistently doubted them. Instead, they believed. They believed in themselves, their coach and most importantly one another, their team.

After Pearl cut down the nets in the Auburn Arena, he told us what we already knew about his first championship squad on the plains, “It’s been the most resilient, focused, self-motivated team I’ve ever coached.”

They say a team takes on the personality of its head coach and no truer words could ever be spoken about Bruce Pearl and the Auburn Tigers, your 2017-18 regular season SEC Champions.