LAHAINA, Hawaii — There was no signature moment, no singular play that proved definitively that Auburn is the best college basketball team in the country.
But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Death by a thousand papercuts is how Auburn coach Bruce Pearl prefers his team to play. It’s wave after wave — fitting, given this week’s locale — of different types of talents, but all of them perfectly square puzzle pieces that complement one another, which need not set order to fit together. Then you put the apparent best individual player in the country, All-American center Johni Broome, in orange and blue, too?
Well, this is what you get: No. 5 Auburn winning 90-76 over Memphis in Wednesday’s Maui Invitational championship game.
But this one win is only the cherry on top of a three-day confirmation, or coronation, that the Tigers are as good as any team in the country. Kansas beat Duke this week to remain undefeated, and it’s tough to demote an unbeaten blue blood from the top spot. But Auburn has as good a case as any, having won three top-12 games in the first month of the season for the first time in program history.
If casual college hoops fans didn’t know Broome’s name before, they certainly do now. En route to earning tournament MVP honors, Auburn’s big man — whose tip-in with under two seconds left against No. 5 Iowa State completed the Tigers’ comeback win, who nearly had 20 and 20 against No. 12 North Carolina in the semifinals — saved his best for last: 21 points, 16 rebounds, six assists, four blocks and one steal.
It was a masterpiece, marvelously done by Auburn’s maestro.
Early work for 4👌 pic.twitter.com/bVgmcfxlvw
— Auburn Basketball (@AuburnMBB) November 27, 2024
You needed no forensics expert to confirm Broome’s fingerprints all over Auburn’s win, straight from the jump. Truthfully, the game was always in the palms of his oversized hands. On the opening possession, the 6-foot-10 graduate stroked the first of his two three-pointers and broke out the celebration he has all week — thumb and pinky out, shaking his hand aloha-style — jogging backward down the court.
Two possessions later and posted up on the block with two Memphis defenders trapping him, Broome picked up his head — something he couldn’t always do when he arrived in the Plains three seasons ago — and dished out the first of his five first-half assists (which tied his season-high) to a cutting Miles Kelly; he eventually finished with six dimes, one off his career-high of seven.
Broome got it done defensively, too, stuffing Memphis’ de-facto MVP Tyrese Hunter on an early turnaround jumper, for one of his three first-half blocks. So, yeah, Broome was critical to Auburn’s 11-2 lead barely four minutes in.
But Pearl’s team is a lot like the crashing Pacific: it comes in waves, neverending, pulling you back down the second you think you’ve found your footing. Four other Tigers — Dylan Cardwell, Chas Baker-Mazara, Denver Jones and Chaney Johnson — had at least five first-half points. And fitting with Pearl’s larger stylistic preference, eight different players saw at least five first-half minutes.
7 for 7🤫 pic.twitter.com/DtnI205shc
— Auburn Basketball (@AuburnMBB) November 27, 2024
Meanwhile, Memphis — which has been the surprise of this tournament and upended No. 2 UConn on Monday before toppling Tom Izzo and Michigan State on Tuesday — would’ve been lost if not for leading scorer PJ Haggerty, whose 15 at the break constituted nearly half of the Tigers’ total scoring efforts. One stat that speaks both to Auburn’s excellence and Memphis’ frustration? Hunter, who made 12 3-pointers the last two days, went scoreless in the game’s first 20 minutes; his first field goal didn’t come until three and a half minutes post-intermission when he made one of the falling-away treys he’s seemingly mastered here in Maui.
If not for Pearl earning a technical foul with under a minute left in the first half — which gifted Memphis guard Colby Rogers four free free-throws — then Auburn’s halftime lead would’ve easily been 20-plus, instead of only 16. Not that a 47-31 deficit was anything Memphis, or any team in attendance of the tournament’s 40th anniversary, was capable of making, anyway.
And without skating right over the second half, what more is there to say? Memphis never got things within 13 after intermission. Coach Penny Hardaway’s Tigers finished the game shooting 50 percent overall and 67 percent from 3 — and still got clobbered. Broome’s drive-and-dunk with 3:17 to play put Auburn up 21, and his punching that one down was as final a punctuation point as any. It was just a matter of the final margin from there.
Although, does the exact margin matter?
Auburn made its case as the country’s top team behind Broome and his ballyhooed supporting cast for three straight days. It was the dominant team, in a field that featured four top-12 sides.
And now? It’ll be a deserved Final Four frontrunner as it flies home, off into the Hawaiian sunset. We’ll see where this team is five months from now, but if this week’s Maui Invitational was any indication, there might still be more magic in store for this team long after it left the island.
(Photo: Darryl Oumi / Getty Images)
