Not even the most die-hard, sunshine-pumping Auburn basketball fanatic could have ever envisioned this. After Auburn’s last game of the regular season, a 79-70 win over a gritty Frank Martin coached South Carolina squad fresh off a Final Four run just a year ago, Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl was standing on a ladder underneath one of Auburn Arena’s basketball goals with a pair of scissors in hand.
The nets were likely already scorched from Bryce Brown’s hot hand from 3-point land as the Stone Mountain, Georgia native saved the best game of his career from beyond the arc for the last game of the regular season, arguably the single most important game for the Tiger basketball program in almost twenty years when Chris Porter’s high flying heroics helped lead Auburn (29-4, 14-2) to an SEC regular season title in 1998-99.