Thank you Seniors and Okoro!!!!

[ellitor 33,083]

9 hours ago, GwillMac6 said:

It was the Kyle guy three right after this. To much is paid attention to the foul on the three point attempt. If he would of missed that and we boarded it then it's game over. It was a ridiculously tough shot that somehow went in. He had been having a terrible day before this........ SMH. It will forever haunt me. I didn't think any game could top the pain of the FSU title game.... Welp.

You missed the double dribble call or noncall that essentially would’ve ended the game.

[GwillMac6 20,666]

2 hours ago, ellitor said:

You missed the double dribble call or noncall that essentially would’ve ended the game.

Because if he missed that three and we snagged the board up 4 going the other way for free throws it wouldn't of came down to that.

[GwillMac6 20,666]

 

[GwillMac6 20,666]

Josh Vitale, Montgomery AdvertiserPublished 7:00 a.m. CT March 15, 2020

AUBURN — On Wednesday, Samir Doughty sat down with reporters inside Auburn Arena to talk about “one of our better games of the season.”

It came four days earlier, on the road at Tennessee. The No. 17-ranked Tigers won in convincing fashion, 85-63. They shot 50% from the floor and made 14 of 32 3-pointers, which was one of their top three performances from deep this season. Doughty was the star, erupting for 32 points with help from a career-high eight made 3s.

It was the type of win the senior guard though could propel Auburn on a postseason run like the one it experienced last season, when it won four straight games to win the SEC Tournament for the first time since 1985 and four more to reach the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history.

Instead, it will (more than likely) go down as the final game of Doughty’s college basketball career. Same goes for fellow seniors Anfernee McLemore, J’Von McCormick, Danjel Purifoy and Austin Wiley. Possibly for true freshman Isaac Okoro, too — he’ll have a chance to declare early for the NBA Draft in the coming months.

 

The Tigers went 25-6, earned the No. 2 seed in the SEC Tournament and would have earned a third consecutive trip to March Madness on Selection Sunday. But the world is dealing with a different kind of madness right now — the college basketball postseason is one of the many sporting events across the country that has been either postponed or, in this case, outright canceled as concern over the spread of the global pandemic coronavirus (COVID-19) intensifies.

 

"We were hoping we could play for another couple championships," Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl said Thursday. "Obviously, the student-athletes were disappointed."

Understandably so. But even if those seniors don’t get to accomplish anything more in an Auburn uniform, they already accomplished a lot — 99 wins (most over a four-year stretch in program history), two SEC championships (regular-season in 2017-18, tournament in 2018-19), two consecutive NCAA Tournament berths (a third was surely coming), one Final Four appearance, and an incredible ability to stay loose and have fun in the face of pretty much anything, even the surprise end to their season.

This team's ability to have fun and enjoy life in the face of everything, both last season and this season, remains undefeated. https://t.co/mNemSzFfbI

— Josh Vitale (@JoshVitale) March 13, 2020

SAMIR DOUGHTY

No one would have blamed Doughty for being livid on April 6, 2019. He could have shouted, lashed out, punched a wall, slammed a chair, anything. People would have understood.

Auburn led Virginia, 62-60, with 1.5 seconds left on the clock. Cavaliers guard Kyle Guy caught an inbounds pass in the left corner, pulled up for 3 and missed. But Doughty, arms stretched straight up over his head, was called for a foul after contacting Guy while he was in the air.

Guy made all three free throws. The Tigers lost, 63-62, in heartbreaking fashion. Virginia won the national championship two days later.

But Doughty responded to that moment with maturity and poise. When Bryce Brown began shouting angrily about the officiating on the way back to the locker room, it was Doughty that put his around his teammate and tried to console him. When reporters were allowed into the locker room for interviews, the then-junior answered every single question as coolly and calmly as he could.

"Refs are in the Final Four because they do a great job at reffing. They're going to try to the best of their ability to make the right call. You can't question none of that," he said. “I’m pretty sure he made the right call, if that's the call he called."

Auburn did a lot of incredible things during last year’s magical postseason run. That was right up there with them. And Doughty responded to that heartbreak by putting together a standout senior season, averaging a team-leading 16.7 points per game on his way to becoming a first-team All-SEC selection.

ANFERNEE MCLEMORE
You could pick out any number of stories about Auburn’s fourth-year fan favorite. McLemore was a three-star recruit who chose the Plains over MIT and the Ivy League. He started as an athletic rim defender and become a 3-point-shooting stretch five after recovering a devastating ankle injury. In the last year, he got engaged to fiancée Ashlee McKee and had a son, Maverick.

MORE: Anfernee McLemore’s Auburn career could be a movie script

But one moment few could forget happened just before Doughty’s controversial foul call at the end of that Final Four loss to Virginia. McLemore went to the free throw line for a one-and-one with Auburn leading, 59-57, with 17.6 seconds left. He spent all 40 seconds he stood at the foul line — between waiting for the teams to line up, the referee to give him the ball and for Pearl to shout out instructions — mouthing the same words over and over again.

“For Chuma.”

That, as much as anything, defined the Tigers’ fight at the tail end of their historic run. They could have easily folded when Chuma Okeke, their quiet, do-it-all star power forward, tore his ACL in the second half of a Sweet 16 win over North Carolina. But rather than dwell on having to play without him, they decided to play for him.

McLemore made both those free throws.

J’VON MCCORMICK

McCormick made some important contributions during that postseason run — specifically in the first halves against Tennessee, New Mexico State and North Carolina — but that was Jared Harper’s team.

This past season, McCormick was the floor general at point guard, and he came up clutch a number of times. None bigger than Feb. 8 against LSU.

Auburn trailed by as many as 14 points in the second half. It was still down eight with less than 70 seconds to play in regulation. That’s when McCormick took over. He hit 3-pointers from the top of the key on back-to-back-to-back possessions to get the home team within two points with 47 seconds to play. And when he missed a fourth that would have given Auburn the lead in regulation, he responded by coming up with a steal. Okoro got the ball ahead to Doughty, who made the game-tying layup to send the game to overtime.

If that wasn’t enough heroics for one afternoon, McCormick hit the game-winning floater with 0.1 seconds remaining in the extra period. Auburn won, 91-90, to claim a share of first place in the SEC standings.

“That’s Mamba mentality,” freshman Devan Cambridge said.

DANJEL PURIFOY

Like McCormick, Purifoy was relegated to coming off the bench during his junior season. He averaged only 3.7 points in 12.1 minutes per game in 2018-19 after being ruled ineligible for the entire 2017-18 season as a result of the scheme that led to former associate head coach Chuck Person’s arrest and dismissal.

If the tweets he sent after nearly every game were any indication, the diminished role clearly frustrated the Centreville native, who was the team’s second leading scorer two years earlier. But Purifoy “stayed ready to help us” despite that frustration, Pearl said, and it paid off for Auburn in the NCAA Tournament.

Purifoy came off the bench to hit four 3-pointers in less than 90 seconds in the second half of that Sweet 16 win over the Tar Heels, quickly stretching the Tigers’ lead from 10 to 16 points. He provided stability for Auburn after it lost Okeke to a season-ending injury in that game, playing 32 and 29 minutes, respectively, in the next two and scoring 13 points to go along with 12 rebounds.

"A lot of people were hitting me up saying go overseas, transfer, it's not good for you, you shouldn't be there. I never listened to it," Purifoy said. "I'm an Auburn guy, and I love Auburn. Auburn has done a lot for me, and I just want to give that back to Auburn."

AUSTIN WILEY

Wiley was dominant in an 83-79 victory over Vanderbilt on Jan. 8. He double-doubled with 13 points and 12 rebounds. He also hit 9 of 10 free throws, which is two off his career high.

But when graduate assistant Ryan Langford went to congratulate him in the locker room, Wiley wasn’t satisfied — the senior center wanted to make all of his free throws.

That idea would have been laughable earlier in his career. Wiley made only 52.5% of his free throws between the 2016-17 and 2018-19 seasons (like Purifoy, he was ineligible in 2017-18). But he knew that wasn’t acceptable. So, going into his senior season, he practiced free throws for multiple hours per day. With direction from Pearl and help from Langford, Wiley completely overhauled his release, making it higher and more consistent.

The result: Wiley shot 67.1% from the charity stripe as a senior.

“That’s the beauty in a kid that wants to get better every day,” Langford told the Montgomery Advertiser earlier this season.

No one could have predicted that Wiley would even still be here this season. The program legacy was a four-star 2017 recruit who graduated high school and enrolled in college a year early. He was supposed to play a season and a half, then bolt for the NBA. Injuries and the lost 2017-18 campaign held him back.

But Wiley never quit working. He helped Auburn to its first men’s basketball Final Four the same way his mother, Vickie Orr, led the Tigers to back-to-back women’s basketball Final Fours in 1988 and 1989. And as a senior, he put together by far the best campaign of his career, averaging 10.6 points, 9.6 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in 21.4 minutes per game.

“It obviously means a lot to be a part of the Auburn family,” Wiley before his senior night earlier this month. “We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs. But at the end of it all, it just means a lot that all the fans have my back when times were hard. It was great winning here.”

[AUBwins 10,074]

☝️This makes it hit home how wonderful this team was the last 2 years.  

[ellitor 33,083]

On 3/15/2020 at 9:17 AM, GwillMac6 said:

Because if he missed that three and we snagged the board up 4 going the other way for free throws it wouldn't of came down to that.

Ok but players make plays. The guy gets a hat tip. 3 refs missing a call that's one of the first things they are taught & supposed to know as refs is completely & totally inexcusable. If it had been called correctly We would have the ball with about 3.5 secs left. Barring a steal UVA would have fouled within a second. If we make both foul shots it's over. If we make 1 we go up 3. Chances are high we would have made at least 1. The smart thing to do would then be foul UVA immediately forcing them to shoot 2 FTs. With roughly 2 or less secs left they had to make the 1st & purposely miss the 2nd & hope to get the rebound to get likely a game tying shot to go to OT. In my 40+ years of watching basketball only 1 time have I seen in that sitch a team make the 1st, miss the 2nd, get the rebound & make the shot to go to OT. Very, Very long odds for UVA had the refs done their job properly.

[abw0004 10,110]

 

[GwillMac6 20,666]

 

[GwillMac6 20,666]

 

[AuburnMike86 43]

These guys changed the Auburn program. I have amazing respect for every single one of them and wish them great success in their next chapter. 

Thanks to all of them!

[gr82be 14,423]

37 minutes ago, GwillMac6 said:

 

Auburn Basketball... Blue Blood 

I know it takes longer than 2-3 seasons but I love Bruce Freaking Pearl. 

[AUBwins 10,074]

4 minutes ago, gr82be said:

Auburn Basketball... Blue Blood 

I know it takes longer than 2-3 seasons but I love Bruce Freaking Pearl. 

How long did it take Gonzaga winning consecutively to now be considered a blue blood? 

[gr82be 14,423]

7 minutes ago, AUBwins said:

How long did it take Gonzaga winning consecutively to now be considered a blue blood? 

A while and still they probably aren't considered one. It's just nice to be in that company. We had pretty good teams in the mid 80's and then a couple with Ellis. This just has a feel of staying power. 

[ellitor 33,083]

37 minutes ago, AUBwins said:

How long did it take Gonzaga winning consecutively to now be considered a blue blood? 

At least 5 years if they even are. I’m not sure they’re a true blue yet.

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662]

I argued blue blood status in basketball about 1.5-2 years ago on a neutral sports forum, and people would say Indiana and Arizona are closer to blue blood status than a current giant like Nova or the Zags. 

I think blue blood status in CBB is the least transient in any major sport. The 4 + 1 you see in most places (Duke, UK, KU, UNC and sometimes UCLA) are rarely ever argued, and never if you take out the last one

[AUBwins 10,074]

1 hour ago, ellitor said:

At least 5 years if they even are. I’m not sure they’re a true blue yet.

If Gonzaga can make several final 4s, including some wins over true blue bloods to get there, I would think they’d have earned their way in. 

[gr82be 14,423]

1 hour ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

I argued blue blood status in basketball about 1.5-2 years ago on a neutral sports forum, and people would say Indiana and Arizona are closer to blue blood status than a current giant like Nova or the Zags. 

I think blue blood status in CBB is the least transient in any major sport. The 4 + 1 you see in most places (Duke, UK, KU, UNC and sometimes UCLA) are rarely ever argued, and never if you take out the last one

Couldn't agree more. I was just having some fun with the tweet. 

[AUBwins 10,074]

1 hour ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

I argued blue blood status in basketball about 1.5-2 years ago on a neutral sports forum, and people would say Indiana and Arizona are closer to blue blood status than a current giant like Nova or the Zags. 

I think blue blood status in CBB is the least transient in any major sport. The 4 + 1 you see in most places (Duke, UK, KU, UNC and sometimes UCLA) are rarely ever argued, and never if you take out the last one

That makes sense

[ellitor 33,083]

1 hour ago, AUBwins said:

If Gonzaga can make several final 4s, including some wins over true blue bloods to get there, I would think they’d have earned their way in. 

They’ve only been to one final four, in 2017. They also have no national championships. You’ve got to have multiple national championships to be considered a blue blood.

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662]

1 hour ago, gr82be said:

Couldn't agree more. I was just having some fun with the tweet. 

I just like discussions about what is and what isnt a modern blueblood, I wasnt disagreeing 

At this point, I dont even know if blue blood status means as much as what you're doing now. Like yeah all those guys are doing well, but I think its more because the NCAA allows them to operate on a different plane than everyone else. Zona, LSU, us, Memphis, countless other teams have took more of a rep hit from the NCAA than I think they'd allow to those 4 teams. Imagine if the NCAA basically told Duke they couldnt play say Zion and RJ bc of an assistant coach paying guys. You cant because they wouldnt!!!

[ellitor 33,083]

2 hours ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

I argued blue blood status in basketball about 1.5-2 years ago on a neutral sports forum, and people would say Indiana and Arizona are closer to blue blood status than a current giant like Nova or the Zags. 

I think blue blood status in CBB is the least transient in any major sport. The 4 + 1 you see in most places (Duke, UK, KU, UNC and sometimes UCLA) are rarely ever argued, and never if you take out the last one

Indiana is definitely a blue blood. They have five national championships which is two more than Kansas. UCLA is also a blue blood. They have the most championships and even when they’re bad they can strike at any moment and get to a final four.

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662]

23 hours ago, ellitor said:

Indiana is definitely a blue blood. They have five national championships which is two more than Kansas. UCLA is also a blue blood. They have the most championships and even when they’re bad they can strike at any moment and get to a final four.

First half of ur argument would make UConn a blueblood too, and possibly Nova who has as many as KU. I dont have any program with any of these programs being BBs, personally

[ellitor 33,083]

13 hours ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

First half of ur argument would make UConn a blueblood too, and possibly Nova who has as many as KU. I dont have any program with any of these programs being BBs, personally

I think you also have to be in a P5 conference to qualify.

[GwillMac6 20,666]

Chuuuuuuuummmmaaaaaaaa for muhhhhhh!!!!! Lol

 

[GwillMac6 20,666]