Can Auburn get back to what it was... when it matters most?
The Tigers' goal in the NCAA Tournament is simple: Play the way they did before anyone knew they were among the best in the country.
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LEXINGTON, Ky. — Johni Broome stood in the center of the locker room and surveyed the area.
“OK, I was here,” Broome said, pointing to a chair. “And C-Mo was there. And Chaney was…”
Tahaad Pettiford soon joined him. “Aura Gang” was officially on the case.
The goal was simple: Try to figure out who was sitting where the last time Auburn was in this exact locker room at Rupp Arena.
That had happened a few weeks earlier, when the Tigers put 94 points on the scoreboard in Lexington for their first win at Kentucky in decades. The victory clinched an SEC regular-season championship — one that grew to an outright crown by the time Auburn got back home.
Everyone knows what’s happened since then. Auburn dropped three of its next four games: a road test at Texas A&M, a home overtime thriller against Alabama and an SEC Tournament semifinal against Tennessee.
So you can understand why Auburn would want to physically get back to where it was before all of that. The last time the Tigers were in Lexington, they were still the No. 1 team in the country and had won a stunning 27 of 29 games. Their only two losses were to a pair of teams that would also be No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.
That was especially the case for Miles Kelly, who hit a ridiculous nine 3-pointers in Auburn’s win over Kentucky less than three weeks earlier.
“Ever since I knew we were coming back here to Rupp, my eyes just lit up,” Kelly said Wednesday afternoon before Auburn’s open practice. “… (The rims) are just soft, man. Every ball that I put up here, it just feels like it's going in.”
Kelly and his teammates did plenty of that in their return to Rupp. One particular drill with assistant coach Ira Bowman saw the Auburn guards hit a streak of consecutive corner 3-pointers that stretched into the double-digits.
Later, when Auburn worked on transition offense — an area that Bruce Pearl has mentioned specifically as one for improvement — Denver Jones drilled a 3-pointer that caused Chad Baker-Mazara to yelp in excitement on the other end of the floor.
“We've already played here and shot well,” Jones said. “I feel like this gym is a shooter's gym, and I said that in our shootaround before we played Kentucky.”
When Auburn beat Kentucky, it hit a dozen 3-pointers and went 46.7% from deep as a team. Now, the Tigers get to shoot in this same historic arena for what they hope will be two wins to get them to Atlanta next weekend.
(By the way, Auburn hit 13 triples and scored 91 in that arena earlier this season.)
“I feel like we're comfortable here,” Baker-Mazara said. “We had a great game as a team. And being able to be back here, playing March Madness, it feels like something really good for us, knowing that we were able to shoot the ball well out here.”
It’s all about getting back to the way it once was for Auburn basketball.