March Madness: Auburn fans’ ...

ATLANTA — Johni Broome left Sunday’s South region final with just under 11 minutes left in the game, with Auburn leading Michigan State 50-40. The ensuing five minutes and eight seconds of game clock were surely the longest of Auburn basketball fans’ lives. And when Broome walked back out through the tunnel and over to Auburn’s bench, Tiger fans thundered their joy … and, more importantly, Auburn’s lead still stood at 10.

Five minutes of game clock later, Auburn fans could exhale at a 70-64 victory, secured even as Broome was clearly at far less than 100 percent. He’d hit the ground hard midway through the second half fighting for a defensive rebound, and hyperextended both his left knee and his right elbow. And all of a sudden, what had been one of the most glorious afternoons The Plains had experienced since the days of Cam Newton turned tense.

Broome’s superlatives are legion and growing — centerpiece of the No. 1 Auburn Tigers attack, top Player of the Year candidate, and now South region Most Outstanding Player. But all those accolades won’t get Auburn a single point in the Final Four, and the unsettling drop in volume in State Farm Arena as Broome sat on the court holding his elbow and gingerly touching his ankle indicated that the Tiger fans understood that reality all too well.

Those fans breathed a touch easier when Broome got to his feet and walked toward the bench without assistance. But he was shaking his head “no” as he went, and kept on walking straight toward the locker room.

“You might have to finish this,” Broome told teammates Chaney Johnson and Dylan Cardwell before he left.

It’s to Auburn’s immense credit that the Tigers did exactly that, keeping pace with Michigan State during the uncertain minutes that Broome was back in the locker room. Although they hadn’t shown it much on Sunday, the Spartans had the power to throw some lockdown defense onto the Tigers, and a 10-point lead could have shrunk to one possession in a hurry.

But Auburn held strong; Johnson banked in two shots and Chad Baker-Mazara drilled a long 3-pointer. And when Broome walked out of the locker room, the heavily pro-Auburn crowd surged with grateful joy.

“Are you good to go?” head coach Bruce Pearl asked Broome on the sideline.

“I am,” he replied.

“Well, get your ass in there!” Seconds later, Broome nailed a 3-pointer, just to put an exclamation point in his return. Those were the final points he would score on the day, but they were more than enough.

(Aside: Sports media of a certain vintage probably ought to stop calling such dramatic returns from injury “Willis Reed moments.” Yes, Reed’s Game 7 walk back from the locker room inspired his Knicks to a victory … in 1970, more than 30 years before today’s college players were born.)

Broome spent the rest of the game with his right arm dangling by his side. He massaged it during stoppages of play, and made awkward one-handed swipes at rebounds. At one point, he looked over at CBS sports broadcaster Grant Hill — a guy who knows a thing or two about heroics in regional finals — and Hill gave Broome an encouraging thumbs-up.

After the game, with a massive ice pack on his elbow and a net around his neck, Broome said the doctor checking his elbow in the locker room called it “nothing serious.” Pearl didn’t offer any more specific information, except to say that all appears on track for Broome to play as normal in San Antonio, where the Tigers will face Florida on Saturday in the national semifinal.

“I think we won't really know until [Monday], whether it’s a slight hyperextension or whatever it was,” he said. “I bet you it will be pretty sore [Monday], though.”

The injury brought an early end to what had been a spectacular game for Broome — first six points of the game scored for Auburn, 25 points on 10-of-13 shooting, 14 total rebounds. Asked to assess his performance, he smiled and shrugged slightly.

“I played all right.”

That he did. And now he gets one more weekend to add to his already spectacular Auburn legacy.