Auburn’s players and coaches stood at midcourt minutes before their SEC Tournament opener Friday afternoon and posed for photos while SEC commissioner Greg Sankey presented the team with its regular-season conference championship trophy.
Bruce Pearl gestured to Sankey to hand the trophy to Allen Flanigan. This was a moment for the players in the spotlight, in recognition of their season-long accomplishment. They smiled. They laughed for a moment as Flanigan struggled with the clunky hardware, but they mostly maintained a collective stoicism.
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The Tigers had more important things on their mind; they were focused on the task at hand — a quarterfinal matchup with eighth-seeded Texas A&M, one of the hottest teams in the conference. It was supposed to be the first step for Auburn in its march toward another SEC Tournament title in Tampa, Fla. Instead, it was an unceremonious exit for the league’s regular-season champs.
Auburn’s stay in Tampa was brief, falling to Texas A&M, 67-62, on Friday at Amalie Arena. A chance to tighten a grip on a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament slipped through the Tigers’ hands, while the Aggies kept their hopes for an invite to the Big Dance intact.
“Give A&M credit,” Pearl said. “They played inspired. They played like their hair was on fire, because they’re trying to get into the NCAA Tournament. We wanted to win this championship. We wanted to build momentum going in, and we got beat by a really good team. But our guys are pretty humble and pretty hungry. We still are.”
There was understandable disappoint in the air for Auburn, which stumbled out of the gate against Texas A&M and never fully recovered.
The Tigers endured an ice-cold first half, shooting just 16.2 percent from the field and trailing by 16 at halftime. The deficit reached 20 midway through the second half, and a frenzied rally in the final 10 minutes wasn’t enough to climb out of that deep hole. The Tigers got within four in the final minutes, but Aggies standout Quenton Jackson made sure they were kept at arm’s length; he had 17 points, including Texas A&M’s final 11 of the game.
While Texas A&M moved on to the semifinals to take on fourth-seeded Arkansas, Auburn returned home to the Plains. The Tigers now await the reveal of their path toward a national title, with the NCAA Tournament selection show coming Sunday at 5 p.m. CT.
Auburn hoped that show would come on the heels of another celebration on the floor of Amalie Arena, this one after an SEC Tournament title in front of a muster of peacocking Tigers fans — the same fans who made Friday’s quarterfinal atmosphere feel like an Auburn home game. Instead, the team will have to sit with its disappointment for two days before turning its focus to its first-round March Madness opponent.
It’s not how the Tigers envisioned themselves entering the NCAA Tournament, yet here they are.
“We feel badly,” Pearl said. “We feel badly for our fans that came out in great numbers…. They love this team. Our fans love this team. This team has given them a lot to love and a lot to support, so I know they’re disappointed. But we feel a responsibility. We do feel like we let them down. Absolutely.”
Pearl told his team in the locker room after the game that it’s OK to be disappointed and it’s OK to be upset after Friday’s loss. He also wanted to make sure the Tigers maintained perspective.
They didn’t plan on losing this early in the SEC Tournament — but they also played well enough throughout the season, showing over the course of the last four months that they’re among the nation’s best teams, to put themselves in a favorable position in March. This loss wasn’t the end of their season; they’ll be a high seed in the field of 68 come Sunday. They earned that.
“Now, can we take advantage of the opportunity we put ourselves in?” Pearl said. “…I want them to try to put a little wind in their sails heading into the tournament.”
That disappointment may linger through the weekend as Auburn watches the rest of the SEC Tournament unfold from the Plains. But then it’ll be time to turn the page and begin preparations for what’s next. The Tigers, after all, have bigger aspirations than the goal they had in Tampa.
As they learned Friday, though, winning in March is difficult.
“Like Coach said before the game today, you have to throw the first punch, so we just got to be ready to play,” guard Wendell Green Jr. said. “This is for sure going to make us more hungry, and hopefully (we’ll) just take it one game at a time and go deep in the tournament.”
Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.
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