Bruce Pearl breaks down final play of regulation, miss by Johni Broome

Johni Broome had a chance to give Auburn the go-ahead bucket at the end of regulatuon to defeat Alabama, but missed the attempt. Broome would finish with 34 points, but the Tigers would go on to lose 93-91 in overtime at the buzzer.

After the game, head coach Bruce Pearl explained his perspective of the final play in regulation. While it didn’t go down at the time, he revealed that it may have set Broome up for the pair of big 3-point shots he made to keep Auburn in the game during overtime.

“I don’t even know exactly what it was,” Pearl said of Broome’s turnaround jumpshot at the end of regulation. “I mean obviously, when Johni knocked the three down from the corner (in overtime) — that was not a designed play. It was a result of what we ran. He was open because they play off the four on a lot of things.

“Whatever we ran, he’s just unguarded, and so that’s why the ball got to him. But it wasn’t designed, it was because the defense wasn’t guarding him on the perimeter. And as a result, knocked down two big threes late.”

Broome’s 34 points came on 15 of 28 shooting. He hauled in eight rebounds during the effort as well. Interestingly, Broome only took five free throw attempts throughout the entire matchup despite his high volume of shot attempts. In turn, Bruce Pearl sounded off on the lack of whistles for Broome in the paint on Saturday.

“Johni Broome took 15 or 16 of his first shots inside the paint and did not get fouled once,” Pearl said. “And I have an issue with that. He could be the National Player of the Year, and he took 15 or 16 shots from 2 and didn’t shoot a free throw. That’s hard to overcome.”

Despite the loss, Auburn had already entered the regular season finale as the outright SEC regular season champions. That means they’ll also be the No. 1 overall seed in Nashville for next week’s conference tournament. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has Auburn as the top overall seed in March Madness as well, a distinction they’ve held for the majority of the season.

The Tigers await either South Carolina, Arkansas or Ole Miss in the quarterfinal of the SEC Tournament. That game will be played at Noon ET on Friday, and will serve as the opening game of the afternoon.