{Post not for the fAUeint of heart; may STILL be "too soon".}
I'd have to study it, in terms of a team being the underdog (or at least non-BlueBlood) for such a historic run. The Tigers had reeled off a stunning 11-game win streak late season, SEC tourney, and making the Final Four by beating Big Blue. And the LAST loss the Tigers had suffered, recall, was a 27-point loss AT Rupp.
Which, of course, was a BIG reason why 'what went down' by the zebras in what the basketball gods ordained to be the FOURTH in a historic run over UVA, also a blue blood, such a travesty. And a few weeks ago, I took one for the team and cathartically watched the final minutes, and was reminded that AU team got down 10 points with 5:18 left against a slow it down, defensive team. Came storming back on the unconscious 3-point storm Bryce Brown unleashed, taking the 2-point lead with 1:31 left, and then a seemingly dagger lead with Anfernee's TWO foul shots he drained ("Do it for Chuma; do it for Chuma") with 12 seconds left.
Sometimes, the greatest March Madness teams (or at least the "hottest" at tourney time) are sneaky hidden, because of circumstances like I've described, and there is only our memories and that of sports writers and analysts to keep that point of view alive through the years, while of course being respectful of the formally awarded champion.
But it damn sure means something to lay waste, in order, to Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, and Big Blue (in overtime). Real basketball people know who should have been cutting down the nets, the honest ones anyway.
E5
Kansas' largest-ever halftime deficit in the NCAAT was 15 (Nova last year), per the broadcast. Auburn is beating Kansas by TWENTY-SIX. Considering Kansas has played 155 tournament games, this is no small feat. Things will only get tougher for Auburn, which could face North Carolina in the next round if the No. 1 seed gets by No. 9 Washington on Sunday. (hahaha)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This is what it looks and sounds like when you can keep dreaming the sweetest dream and dance toward history, when you leave No. 1 North Carolina devastated and send the Tar Heels home.
Because here came a euphoric Bryce Brown, sprinting through the tunnel that led from the Sprint Center court, floating on cloud nine and screaming loud enough for everyone up in Auburn hoop heaven to hear:
“Let’s gooo! Let’s goooo!”
Brown roared as he kept sprinting to a locker room they could have renamed Exhilaration U.
They played with no fear.
They played to win.
They were the hungrier team, the tougher team.
They were unrelenting on the boards against a team that had dominated Iona and Washington.
They believed this was their time.
And it sure was.
North Carolina has been to 20 Final Fours.
Auburn has not been to one.
And now the No. 5-seeded Tigers, the stunning 97-80 winner over No. 1 seed North Carolina, will get their crack at history in Sunday’s Midwest Regional Elite Eight game against Kentucky.
“Unbelievable, man … I mean, every win just gets sweeter and sweeter,” Brown said at his locker. “At this point, it’s starting to feel unreal, but we wanted to make a run in March. We didn’t know we were gonna get this hot. It’s not just one or two guys stepping up, we got a whole team stepping up.
“And it’s not by accident. If anybody wants to say Auburn’s getting lucky, we worked for this, we worked to be in the gym together all the time.”
The Tigers drilled 12-of-18 from Alabama in the second half and refused to let the loss, with 8:08 remaining, of Chuma Okeke (knee), their best player on this night, deflate them.
Okeke’s left leg buckled as he tried to plant on a drive, and the Sprint Center fell silent before he was helped to his feet and escorted off the court. His 20 points and 11 rebounds had left the Tar Heels and their loyalists shell shocked. So was the Tiger bench (40-21 advantage).
“I’m really proud of our team,” Okeke said in a statement afterward. “We were able to make history tonight. We do not drop off when we go to our bench and we’ll be ready for whoever we play on Sunday.”
Said Brown: “It was tough seeing him go down. I felt like we fed off of it. If anything, it wasn’t gonna drop us. We just wanted to do it for him after that.”
Twice in the second half, North Carolina freshman Nassir Little was rejected at the rim. The Tar Heels were rattled, and the Tigers knew it, saw it, heard it.
“Once we got a pretty good lead, they began to take quick shots … it looked like they stopped trusting each other as much, the ball wasn’t moving, and you just seen they were just getting out of rhythm with everything,” Brown said.
A trio of 3s off the bench from Danjel Purifoy and a banked 3 by Anfernee McLemore gave Auburn a 76-57 lead. Purifoy was suspended last season and for the first nine games of this season after being named in a federal complaint against former Auburn men’s basketball assistant coach Chuck Person.
“BP [coach Bruce Pearl] was like, ‘You want me to throw you out there?’ I was like, ‘Sure, why not?’ ” Purifoy said. “Once I shot the first one, he kept feeding me, and I just kept shooting it.”
It killed Purifoy not to be with his brothers for so long.
“To be honest, to all the players out there that have to wait, that have to be patient,” he said, “it’s worth it.”
McLemore did not call bank. Perhaps the basketball gods did.
“It was just like everything was going for us, so when I shot it and it went in, I feel like we really won the game at that point,” he said.
A pair of 3s by Jared Harper and Brown, who had uncharacteristically combined for only two first-half points, and a J by Malik Dunbar at
the start of the second half, gave Auburn a 49-39 lead.
It prompted Carolina coach Roy Williams to get in his players’ faces during a timeout.
“I didn’t help them a heck of a lot today,” Williams said. “I didn’t get them as prepared as Bruce got his team prepared. But Bruce loves his team, but he can’t love his team any more than Roy Williams loves his team.”
Okeke scored seven straight Auburn points to give the Tigers a 56-46 lead with 15:54 left. Carolina never drew closer than 56-47.
“They got hot in the second half and they kind of carried that momentum throughout the second half,” Kenny Williams said.
A driving lay-in before the buzzer by J’Von McCormick sent Auburn into intermission with a 41-39 lead … even though the Tigers were 5-19 from downtown. But they had made 13-of-19 of their 2s and frustrated the Tar Heels (5-15 from Chapel Hill) on the other end.
“We’re a second-half team,” Samir Doughty said.
The 1986 team had been the lone Auburn team to reach an Elite Eight.
Pearl played a clip in the morning of a commentator giving Carolina a 79 percent chance of winning. In the postgame locker room, Pearl delivered this message: “He told us to act like we’ve been here before,” Purifoy said.
“None of us ever been here before, so it’s kinda hard.”
None of them, from any Auburn team, have ever been to the Final Four. Forty minutes to history. Asked what kind of statement Auburn had just made, Brown said: “We’re here to stay. We’re not gonna back down from nobody.”
I'd have to study it, in terms of a team being the underdog (or at least non-BlueBlood) for such a historic run. The Tigers had reeled off a stunning 11-game win streak late season, SEC tourney, and making the Final Four by beating Big Blue. And the LAST loss the Tigers had suffered, recall, was a 27-point loss AT Rupp.
Which, of course, was a BIG reason why 'what went down' by the zebras in what the basketball gods ordained to be the FOURTH in a historic run over UVA, also a blue blood, such a travesty. And a few weeks ago, I took one for the team and cathartically watched the final minutes, and was reminded that AU team got down 10 points with 5:18 left against a slow it down, defensive team. Came storming back on the unconscious 3-point storm Bryce Brown unleashed, taking the 2-point lead with 1:31 left, and then a seemingly dagger lead with Anfernee's TWO foul shots he drained ("Do it for Chuma; do it for Chuma") with 12 seconds left.
Sometimes, the greatest March Madness teams (or at least the "hottest" at tourney time) are sneaky hidden, because of circumstances like I've described, and there is only our memories and that of sports writers and analysts to keep that point of view alive through the years, while of course being respectful of the formally awarded champion.
But it damn sure means something to lay waste, in order, to Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, and Big Blue (in overtime). Real basketball people know who should have been cutting down the nets, the honest ones anyway.
E5
Kansas' largest-ever halftime deficit in the NCAAT was 15 (Nova last year), per the broadcast. Auburn is beating Kansas by TWENTY-SIX. Considering Kansas has played 155 tournament games, this is no small feat. Things will only get tougher for Auburn, which could face North Carolina in the next round if the No. 1 seed gets by No. 9 Washington on Sunday. (hahaha)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This is what it looks and sounds like when you can keep dreaming the sweetest dream and dance toward history, when you leave No. 1 North Carolina devastated and send the Tar Heels home.
Because here came a euphoric Bryce Brown, sprinting through the tunnel that led from the Sprint Center court, floating on cloud nine and screaming loud enough for everyone up in Auburn hoop heaven to hear:
“Let’s gooo! Let’s goooo!”
Brown roared as he kept sprinting to a locker room they could have renamed Exhilaration U.
They played with no fear.
They played to win.
They were the hungrier team, the tougher team.
They were unrelenting on the boards against a team that had dominated Iona and Washington.
They believed this was their time.
And it sure was.
North Carolina has been to 20 Final Fours.
Auburn has not been to one.
And now the No. 5-seeded Tigers, the stunning 97-80 winner over No. 1 seed North Carolina, will get their crack at history in Sunday’s Midwest Regional Elite Eight game against Kentucky.
“Unbelievable, man … I mean, every win just gets sweeter and sweeter,” Brown said at his locker. “At this point, it’s starting to feel unreal, but we wanted to make a run in March. We didn’t know we were gonna get this hot. It’s not just one or two guys stepping up, we got a whole team stepping up.
“And it’s not by accident. If anybody wants to say Auburn’s getting lucky, we worked for this, we worked to be in the gym together all the time.”
The Tigers drilled 12-of-18 from Alabama in the second half and refused to let the loss, with 8:08 remaining, of Chuma Okeke (knee), their best player on this night, deflate them.
Okeke’s left leg buckled as he tried to plant on a drive, and the Sprint Center fell silent before he was helped to his feet and escorted off the court. His 20 points and 11 rebounds had left the Tar Heels and their loyalists shell shocked. So was the Tiger bench (40-21 advantage).
“I’m really proud of our team,” Okeke said in a statement afterward. “We were able to make history tonight. We do not drop off when we go to our bench and we’ll be ready for whoever we play on Sunday.”
Said Brown: “It was tough seeing him go down. I felt like we fed off of it. If anything, it wasn’t gonna drop us. We just wanted to do it for him after that.”
Twice in the second half, North Carolina freshman Nassir Little was rejected at the rim. The Tar Heels were rattled, and the Tigers knew it, saw it, heard it.
“Once we got a pretty good lead, they began to take quick shots … it looked like they stopped trusting each other as much, the ball wasn’t moving, and you just seen they were just getting out of rhythm with everything,” Brown said.
A trio of 3s off the bench from Danjel Purifoy and a banked 3 by Anfernee McLemore gave Auburn a 76-57 lead. Purifoy was suspended last season and for the first nine games of this season after being named in a federal complaint against former Auburn men’s basketball assistant coach Chuck Person.
“BP [coach Bruce Pearl] was like, ‘You want me to throw you out there?’ I was like, ‘Sure, why not?’ ” Purifoy said. “Once I shot the first one, he kept feeding me, and I just kept shooting it.”
It killed Purifoy not to be with his brothers for so long.
“To be honest, to all the players out there that have to wait, that have to be patient,” he said, “it’s worth it.”
McLemore did not call bank. Perhaps the basketball gods did.
“It was just like everything was going for us, so when I shot it and it went in, I feel like we really won the game at that point,” he said.
A pair of 3s by Jared Harper and Brown, who had uncharacteristically combined for only two first-half points, and a J by Malik Dunbar at
the start of the second half, gave Auburn a 49-39 lead.
It prompted Carolina coach Roy Williams to get in his players’ faces during a timeout.
“I didn’t help them a heck of a lot today,” Williams said. “I didn’t get them as prepared as Bruce got his team prepared. But Bruce loves his team, but he can’t love his team any more than Roy Williams loves his team.”
Okeke scored seven straight Auburn points to give the Tigers a 56-46 lead with 15:54 left. Carolina never drew closer than 56-47.
“They got hot in the second half and they kind of carried that momentum throughout the second half,” Kenny Williams said.
A driving lay-in before the buzzer by J’Von McCormick sent Auburn into intermission with a 41-39 lead … even though the Tigers were 5-19 from downtown. But they had made 13-of-19 of their 2s and frustrated the Tar Heels (5-15 from Chapel Hill) on the other end.
“We’re a second-half team,” Samir Doughty said.
The 1986 team had been the lone Auburn team to reach an Elite Eight.
Pearl played a clip in the morning of a commentator giving Carolina a 79 percent chance of winning. In the postgame locker room, Pearl delivered this message: “He told us to act like we’ve been here before,” Purifoy said.
“None of us ever been here before, so it’s kinda hard.”
None of them, from any Auburn team, have ever been to the Final Four. Forty minutes to history. Asked what kind of statement Auburn had just made, Brown said: “We’re here to stay. We’re not gonna back down from nobody.”
