Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Last weekend featured some nerve-wracking moments for Auburn fans. 

In the Sweet 16, Auburn trailed by nine points midway through the second half against Michigan, which featured on of their own in Tre Donaldson leading the Wolverines at the point. 

As Opelika-Auburn News columnist Justin Lee always says, Auburn has never played a normal game. The second weekend of the NCAA Tournament amped it up a few notches. 

So from that moment, Auburn went on an amazing run to come back and win going away against the Wolverines.

The Elite Eight game with Michigan State looked like it might be a stress-free game, but then you had the most stressful of all things happen. That was when Johni Broome’s elbow bent a way that it shouldn’t have as he was fighting for a rebound.

We didn’t know how serious it was. It looked bad, and it was bad enough for him to go off the floor to the locker room to get evaluated by trainers. He looked at his teammates as he left and said that they would have to get them to the finish line.

And this was also Broome’s best game of his career on the biggest stage so far. So it was gut-wrenching to see him after leave the game. 

I don’t know what they did to treat his hyper-extended elbow. Maybe they gave him some meds or something. However, it was good enough for him to come back out on the floor a few minutes later.

When he left the game, Auburn led by 10. The lead fell back to nine points from the point when State Farm Arena erupted as he came back on the floor. 

Broome was obviously bothered by the injury, seemingly playing with one arm. He corralled a rebound with his good arm, which is also his shooting arm.

Then a few moments later, he decided to take a 3-pointer and in Willis Reed fashion, he buried the trey that seemingly sealed the win for the Tigers. 

It is something that you might not believe if a Hollywood sports movie depicted it, but in reality, it was the drama that CBS Sports could only dream of happening.

To be fair, over the years we have seen some critical injuries to players happen on the second weekend. Six years ago, Auburn lost Chuma Okeke to injury in the Sweet 16, but the team rallied and somehow found themselves in Minneapolis for the Final Four.

While I know Broome is going to be sore for a while, there’s no doubt he will play in the Final Four to try and help Auburn win its first men’s basketball championship. 

My hope is that he doesn’t risk further injury by continuing to play, but at this level, players will do that. The drive to win is so big that they will do whatever it takes to get it done. 

Those stories inspire us to continue to fight even when we don’t feel like it or when it doesn’t look like we have the capacity to keep trying. Those are the life lessons we learn about powering through and pushing yourself to do more than you though you could.

This Auburn fan will be watching this weekend to see how this story ends.

 

Brent Maze is the publisher of The Demopolis Times. He can be reached at brent.maze@demopolistimes.com.