Johni Broome, Auburn started fast at Final Four but wilted as Florida found its momentum
SAN ANTONIO – From the moment Florida reached its locker room at halftime of Saturday’s 79-73 national semifinal win against Auburn, the focus turned entirely to one corner of the room.
Auburn had just finished the first half with 26 points in the paint, shooting 13-of-18 on 2-pointers. Johni Broome, seemingly unbothered by his elbow injury, scored a team-high 12 points. And the Tigers led by eight.
Simply, the Gators were getting overrun in the post, and it was torpedoing nearly everything else they needed to do.
Those halftime minutes became a crucial test of Florida’s resolve: Trash its game plan, and try to Xs-and-Os its way back, or pull together, stay the course and give a team as dangerous as any in the country the platform to punch back.
“Our game plan, we weren’t executing it very well, and it wasn’t working very well,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “The main message at halftime was we have to get back to doing what we do, and executing in a positive way.”
Mission accomplished. On to Monday night.
The status of Broome’s injured elbow dominated headlines and questions leading into Saturday’s semifinal of No. 1 seeds. When healthy, the fifth-year senior from Florida is among the most dominant two-way post players in the country, finishing a close second to Duke freshman Cooper Flagg in the race for college basketball’s best player.
But Broome’s health could not be Golden’s concern. Florida’s coach knows Auburn well, and Bruce Pearl even better. The Gators knew they could not double from the perimeter, or help off dangerous Auburn shooters.
Instead, they turned Broome’s battle into one of attrition. Just run fresh size at him possession after possession, hoping he wears down. If you wore a Florida uniform and stood 6-9 or taller, you were going to get to know Broome personally Saturday night.
“Just constant contact on him and making every post catch difficult for him was the strategy that we tried to apply,” sophomore forward Alex Condon said, “to make it hard for him down the stretch.”
The question was whether that strategy — sound in theory — would survive reality.
Broome plays a lot. He always has. This year, he played a greater percentage of available minutes than any of the three seasons he’s spent at Auburn, and on top of that he’s hurt. Essentially making him impact the game through the work of four makes sense on a locker-room white board.
Can it endure those 12 first-half points? The 26-14 disadvantage in points in the paint? Living ever so slightly underwater on the glass?
Sometimes, the hardest thing to do is what you’re told to. Could Florida’s strategy withstand the fundamental fear that, once you’ve given Auburn the means to gear up its prodigious offense, the No. 1 overall seed in this year’s tournament will use it to flatten you?
Down eight at halftime, the Gators didn’t waver.
Walter Clayton Jr. huddled with his front line for a pep talk. Associate head coach Carlin Hartman was apparently more pointed.
“That’s not the style of basketball we played at the beginning. (Auburn) out-physicaled us,” sophomore forward Thomas Haugh said. “Coach Hartman got on us a lot at halftime. That helped a lot, going into that second half.”
A response came almost immediately.
Florida’s offense, never without a well-timed right hook, threw a 9-0 run into Auburn just after halftime to even the score. And steadily, Broome began to fade.
He finished the second half with four field-goal attempts, compared to 10 in the opening 20 minutes. Three of those four came within the first eight minutes of the half, a stretch during which Auburn battled Florida to a standstill.
The longer, however, the Tigers went without their bellwether, the more predictable, turgid and ineffective that celebrated offense became.
“We just did not execute offensively in the second half,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said, and the numbers backed him up.
Tahaad Pettiford, who averaged 17.3 points over Auburn’s first four games in this tournament, finished with just seven Saturday. He made only one field goal on six shots. Dylan Cardwell could not adequately replace Broome for impact. The Tigers made just 7-of-25 attempts from behind the 3-point line, and made only three triples after halftime.
All while Broome — the rock upon which this halcyon era for Auburn has been built — shrank steadily from the game. He attempted just one field goal in the last 12 minutes of the game, and none in the last six, and he missed four of his five second-half free-throw attempts.
“It felt,” Condon said, “like he had a lot more energy in the first half.”
Broome’s injury will be remembered for an uncomfortably long time in Lee County, Alabama. It stands among the great what-ifs in Auburn basketball history.
“My elbow felt fine coming into the game,” Broome said afterward. “Obviously, here and there it bothered me a little bit, but nothing I couldn’t play with. I feel like we got the looks that we wanted to get. I wasn’t able to capitalize and finish them.”
His health, though, wasn’t what sent Florida on to Monday night, so much as the Gators’ resolve. Their willingness to find more toughness when more toughness was required, and to stay the course with a strategy that wasn’t working, right up until it did.
“The heart and just toughness, both physically, mentally, that these guys showed today was incredible,” Golden said. “We’re alive, man. We’re playing for this national championship on Monday night.”
Contributing: Paul Myerberg, Paste BN Sports
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on X: @ZachOsterman.