"Nobody made excuses"

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Tigers win, clinch share of SEC title

Bryan Matthews | Senior Editor

AUBURN | A shaky start couldn’t keep these Tigers from cutting down the nets.

No. 14 Auburn shot a blistering 50 percent from the floor in the second half to rally for a 79-70 win over South Carolina and at least a share of the SEC Championship, its third overall and first since 1999.

The Tigers finish the regular season 25-6 and 13-5 in the conference, the second-most wins in school history.

"To win the league wire to wire in a year when this league is as good — I don’t know if any of you have ever seen it better top to bottom or bottom to top — is a tremendous, tremendous accomplishment," Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. "This championship means more in 2018 because of how great our league is."

 

Auburn wins its third SEC Championship in school history.

Bryan Matthews/AuburnSports.com

Bryce Brown broke out of his shooting slump with a game-high 29 points along with four rebounds and two steals. Brown made 4-of-5 3-pointers in the second half and 8-of-12 overall, scoring his 1,000th career points.

"We hung in there early when they were playing great and we were playing awful," Pearl said. "We finally started to attack out of some spacing. Bryce Brown got back to doing what he does, and that’s if he can see it, he can make it. I thought Jared and our team did a really good job of getting him the ball down in the corner and he was the difference for us offensively."

Auburn had 12 steals and scored 18 points off 20 South Carolina turnovers. Auburn won the rebounding battle 41-36. The teams combined for 41 fouls including 24 on the Gamecocks.

Jared Harper added 18 points including 12 in the second half. He added five rebounds, eight assists and two steals. Mustapha Heron had 12 points and five rebounds, making 10-of-10 free throws as the Tigers made 24-of-29 overall.

Horace Spencer had 11 points, six rebounds and two steals, while Chuma Okeke chipped in five points, nine rebounds, two steals and three blocks.

It was a first half of extremes as South Carolina opened up an early 14-point lead and Auburn made just two of its first 15 shots from the floor including 0-of-9 from 3-point range. The Tigers heated up in the final eight minutes as Brown made four-straight from beyond the arc and the Tigers took the lead with a 20-8 run before Frank Booker hit a late 3-pointer to give the Gamecocks a 37-35 halftime lead.

“It’s having to enjoy the game again. I felt like I was pushing, forcing at times. Just getting outside of what I do,” said Brown of making just 27.5 percent of his 3-pointers in the previous five games.

“Before this game I kind of lost a little confidence in my shot but I put a lot of work in on it so I knew coming into this game it wasn’t going to last for long.”

South Carolina, which falls to 16-15 overall and 7-11 in the SEC, was led by Booker with 27 points.

Auburn had to overcome a lot of obstacles to win the conference title. Assistant coach Chuck Person was arrested in September and projected starters Austin Wiley and Danjel Purifoy were suspended as part of an FBI probe into college basketball.

Starting center Anfernee McLemore went down with a season-ending injury at South Carolina Feb. 17 and the Tigers lost three of four heading into the season finale.

"Having gone through some of the adversity through the course of the season did not sidetrack us. Nobody made excuses for being shorthanded. The guys wanted to make history, and they truly, truly did," Pearl said.

In Brown's first two seasons, Auburn finished 11-20 and 18-14. He's never played in a postseason game. That will change in a little more than a week.

"It’s unreal, unbelievable knowing where this program has come from," Brown said. "When I signed here, of course, our goal was to win a championship but I don’t know if I really truly felt we were really going to be able to. Three years later there it goes, right here. It’s an unreal, unbelievable. It hasn’t hit me yet but it feels good right now."

Next up for Auburn is the SEC Tournament in St. Louis. As the No. 1 seed, the Tigers will have a double-bye and not play until Friday at noon CT.

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0-9 from the arc! That’s not easy to overcome. 

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