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Zep Jasper takes a photo with a fan during Auburn’s open practice Thursday in the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C.
Auburn guard K.D. Johnson reacts during the second half of a college basketball game against Miami in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Sunday in Greenville, S.C.
It’s a schoolday again here at Auburn. The field trip is over.
Here at Toomer’s Corner, a girl is taking graduation photos. A kid on a bike carefully pedals around wide to try to stay out of the shot. The photographer’s little daughter is running around barefoot on the bricks and there’s a professor within earshot complaining about excused absences and unexcused absences and all that school stuff.
Auburn’s basketball team is back from Greenville, the fans are back from Greenville, with the big postseason trip cut short. And life goes on even as some fans have a hard time with that.
I guess it would make sense for Auburn to have an immature basketball fanbase. In a lot of ways, it is an immature basketball fanbase. It’s not a bad thing; this is new here. Auburn hasn’t dealt with many seasons like this, many endings like this, and that’s partly a testament to the new heights the team’s gone to in recent years.
Auburn peaked at the wrong time. Why? It’s hard to tell. Asking me? Maybe they just ran too thin on scoring options. North Carolina beat down Duke at the end of the regular season and it did it by not substituting at all in the second half of the game. UNC really came out of halftime, sent their five best dudes out there and just let them do it all. It can work.
It could’ve worked for Auburn. Devan Cambridge’s shot was off and Allen Flanigan wasn’t 100-percent, and maybe more opportunities went to Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler down the stretch because they’re so good and that’s great until they’re off, and maybe then Auburn was stuck with less scoring options than it would’ve liked to have looking back. Maybe it was a valid strategy that just didn’t work this time.
That’s just what I think might have happened. It doesn’t mean anything more than what you think or what anyone else thinks. Everyone can think what they want and these days everyone can say what they want, and it’s weird in a way that people are this downtrodden and this upset, that we all have these opinions and explanations, because it’s not like anyone thought Auburn would never lose again. That’s not what this was about.
At the end of the day, this season will be remembered for the way the team, for however long, made the center of the basketball world this lovely village on the Plains.
That’s never been done before. Charles Barkley never did it, Chris Porter never did it, the 2019 dudes didn’t do it and it’s the kind of institutional growth that’ll last a lot longer than a scoring slump.
The arena was on fire this season. For the first time ever, Auburn was the college basketball mountaintop. Auburn moved to No. 1 in the AP rankings for the first time ever and everyone around the country raved about the home-court advantage in front of The Jungle. Auburn never lost at home. Auburn never even won by any less than nine here. Only Kentucky managed to not get blitzed by double digits.
That’s the stride forward Auburn made this season, and as another tall housing development breaks ground downtown here, Auburn keeps growing and changing but you know it keeps being Auburn.
The sun comes up and life goes on and for this next photo the girl taking graduation pictures pulls out a shaker from under her gown.
You win or you go home, right?
Auburn lost, so home it is.
Time to get back, to get ready for next season, or the NBA Draft, or whatever is next for this young lady who’s graduating — and whatever is next for this place.
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Zep Jasper takes a photo with a fan during Auburn’s open practice Thursday in the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C.
Auburn guard K.D. Johnson reacts during the second half of a college basketball game against Miami in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Sunday in Greenville, S.C.
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