NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Chris Moore was trying to explain why the players on this Auburn team relish the idea of being “villains,” because “I feel like the villains are the good guys sometimes,” which sounds a bit more like an anti-hero, no?
Tony Soprano, Walter White and so on. Even when they don’t do the right things, people are drawn to them and root for them.
“Yeah, the anti-hero, yeah,” Moore said Saturday after Auburn’s SEC Tournament semifinals comeback win over Mississippi State, which led to Sunday’s 86-67 rout of Florida in Sunday’s final at Bridgestone Arena. “Most definitely. Like a ‘Despicable Me’ kind of bad guy. That’s who we are.”
Bear with the conversation, one of many fascinating ones over the weekend with the Tigers, who are as joyful and entertaining as they are dangerous in the next tournament — the No. 4 seed in the East Region, starting Friday in Spokane, Wash., against No. 13 seed Yale, with a potential opportunity ahead against top seed UConn.
The necessary follow-up for Moore, of course, is how coach Bruce Pearl figures into the “anti-hero” identity. It’s almost too perfect, right? Pearl arrived at Auburn with a year left on his NCAA show-cause penalty tracing back to the investigation that cost him his job at Tennessee, and the school reportedly ordered him to cooperate with an FBI investigation into his program’s recruiting practices in 2017 or risk being fired — which was the fate of then-assistant Chuck Person.
But in this era of college athletes getting paid out in the open, coaches are judged only on the results of their recruiting and coaching efforts. Pearl is undeniably elite in both areas. Before he arrived in 2014, Auburn’s last SEC title of any kind came in 1999. He now has two regular-season titles and two conference tourney titles in a 7-year span, which also includes the only Final Four in program history.
He is adored, as heard in the earsplitting “Bruuuuuuuuuuce!” he heard from an arena packed with Auburn fans when he took the microphone shortly after the buzzer sounded Sunday — did Springsteen get it that good when he played this place? When Pearl came out of the tunnel and onto the floor for the second half Sunday, a Kentucky fan who decided to stick around all weekend yelled at him: “Let’s go, Bruce! Come to Kentucky, man!”
Gettin’ loud in Bridgestone Arena with this right here‼️ pic.twitter.com/iuV5gbU7uU
— Auburn Basketball (@AuburnMBB) March 17, 2024
“He’s probably Gru,” Moore said of Pearl and the diabolical villain (voiced by Steve Carell in the animated movie franchise), who is just a sensitive guy looking for love. “We’re all the little Minions that’s working behind him and everything.”
At the risk of taking this too far, there is a certain uniformity in the way Auburn — the deepest team in college basketball, with two essentially equal partners at all five positions — can mix and match its lineup to the situation at hand. These 10 guys all defend, run, share the ball and attack. Look closer and they all bring unique basketball contributions, and personalities, to an enterprise that has realistic designs on doubling Auburn’s Final Fours.
The characters include senior guard K.D. Johnson, the combustible scorer and ferocious defender who has accepted a lesser role this season off the bench and brings the same energy — never losing confidence, sometimes taking shots that he shouldn’t be confident in, always applying pressure to the opponent whether they are falling or not.
“The thing about this team,” Johnson said, “is that we really all love each other.”
There’s star center Johni Broome, named MVP of the tournament after capping a three-day run with 19 points and 11 rebounds, a guy who would be averaging more than 16.2 points a game if he was playing more than 24.8 minutes — which is highest on the team. Backup Dylan Cardwell is at 5.4 points and 14.6 minutes and could have much larger numbers at many other places. Those two celebrated with each other as emphatically as anyone during the Florida timeouts meant to stop Auburn runs amid the deafening roars of Auburn fans.
Broome grabbed the microphone after the game and promised those fans: “We’re not losing no more.”
Asked if that constitutes guaranteeing a national championship afterward, he told The Athletic: “I guarantee it.”
Auburn coach Bruce Pearl celebrates with Johni Broome (left) and Chad Baker-Mazara after defeating Florida in the SEC Tournament championship game. (Christopher Hanewinckel / USA Today)
There’s 6-foot-7 junior wing Chad Baker-Mazara, one of four key additions who have meshed with six returnees — it was seven before Lior Berman was lost to a season-ending knee injury — to create a team that might be better than the 2019 Final Four squad. Baker-Mazara is a gangly collection of elbows and knees, a Chris Douglas-Roberts-evoking scorer with a crafty handle and the most efficient long-range numbers (41.8 percent) on the team.
The JUCO transfer, previously at San Diego State and Duquesne, hit the big shots in Saturday’s win over the Bulldogs and also took a shove from and had words with MSU’s D.J. Jeffries. He’s a talker, to opponents, teammates, officials and fans, mostly with a huge smile on his face. A native of the Dominican Republic, he said he picked Auburn over the summer because Pearl and the assistant coaches actually tried to translate Spanish on an app and communicate with his mother, while other coaches basically ignored her.
“And my mom is like my heart and soul, so to see that little thing they were trying to do just for her to make her feel comfortable, make her feel at home, that just (spoke to) my heart,” Baker-Mazara said. “I was like, ‘OK, these guys, I know they’re gonna care for me.’”
There’s 6-6 senior Moore, who backs up Baker-Mazara and fell out of the rotation altogether this season before finding his best ball in recent weeks. He’s the “soul and heart” of our team, Baker-Mazara said, the guy who yelled at his teammates to “pull your britches up” at halftime of the MSU game because they were getting outhustled.
He also stays on everyone to keep their confidence and aggression up through mistakes, because he wasn’t earlier in the season — and even for a team as unselfish as this one must be, that’s an obvious challenge of a rotation like this. Pearl always has options. So don’t mess up.
“They also know that I don’t always get it right,” Pearl said. “They know I make mistakes. But I think they know I’m doing it to the best of my ability. I’ve got to overcome some of the crazy things they do, some of the decisions they make. They’ve got to overcome me, too. We forgive each other.”
And now the Tigers enter the NCAA Tournament as SEC Tournament champs, ranking No. 4 in the nation in defensive efficiency, No. 10 in offensive efficiency and with no obvious weakness. And with an inspired fan base — more Minions — who heard the team’s call to pack Bridgestone on Sunday and responded.
Pearl was emotional as he addressed the crowd, tears streaming down his cheeks, talking about how he lost his 88-year-old father, Bernie, in August, and how Bernie must have “swatted away some of those (Florida) shots.”
It was an emotional day, starting early in the game when Florida big man Micah Handlogten went down awkwardly and lay on the floor for several minutes in shock and pain. Auburn players gathered together in the silent arena and prayed for Handlogten, who was soon taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center with a leg fracture.
“I’m just praying for his family, we’re all praying for his family, and for him especially,” Moore said. “His bounce back is gonna be amazing.”
Spoken like a good guy.
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(Top photo of Johni Broome: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
