Feb. 19, 2018
By Greg Ostendorf
AuburnTigers.com
AUBURN, Ala. -- Bruce Pearl stood in his team's locker room after Saturday's loss to South Carolina searching for the right thing to say. There wasn't a lot of talking. The team was disappointed, eager to put that game behind them and move on. But they were sad, too, having just lost one of their brothers, Anfernee McLemore, to a season-ending injury.
"What's making this journey so special are the men that are in this room," Pearl told his guys. "What's making this season and this run so special is ..." the Auburn coach paused for a moment. "... next man up. Next man up."
"What's making this journey so special are the men that are in this room."#WarEagle pic.twitter.com/ES84O02dms
-- Auburn Basketball (@AuburnMBB) February 18, 2018
McLemore's injury was a difficult pill to swallow. The sophomore big man came into Saturday's game averaging 7.7 points and 5.3 rebounds per game. His 71 blocked shots led the SEC and ranked No. 13 nationally, and thanks to tireless work in the offseason, he developed an outside shot that made him a matchup nightmare for opposing defenses.
"It's a tough loss," Pearl said Monday. "Anfernee has had a wonderful season. The discipline with which he trained to be able to offensively step out onto the floor and shoot the ball from the perimeter. For his size, he's the best shot blocker in college basketball. He's such a disciplined hard worker both as a student and an athlete.
"His brothers are just heart-broken over the injury. Certainly, it was a gruesome injury, but one that he's going to recover from."
All is not lost, though. For starters, McLemore underwent surgery Sunday, and Pearl said it went "extremely well." The doctors believe the Georgia native will recover in four months and could be back to 100 percent as early as this summer.
As far as on the court, Auburn (23-4, 11-3) is still in position to win the SEC regular season title for the first time since 1999. The Tigers could clinch a share of it Wednesday night. They just have to do it with eight players now instead of nine, which means extended minutes for everybody and in particular, the trio of Horace Spencer, Chuma Okeke and Desean Murray inside.
"What's wrong with a little more Chuma?," Pearl asked. "What's wrong with a little more Desean or a little more Horace? Nothing. What's wrong is less Anfernee. That's what's wrong. We'll miss him. We'll obviously miss his rim protection, his shot-blocking ability, the lobs we get to him at the rim, his three-point shooting. He'll be missed.
"But the other guys clearly are able to make up for him."
That was evident Saturday when the Tigers, sans McLemore, rallied back from a 22-point halftime deficit to cut the lead to five before running out of gas down the stretch. But the effort was there. The energy was there. They were as hungry as ever.
When McLemore went down, Spencer jumped off the bench and ran over to the scorer's table. He knew the severity of the injury, and he knew it was his turn to step up.
"It was sad in the moment," Spencer said. "A couple of guys broke out in tears, me being one of them. But I feel like being a leader of the team, I had to show the guys what we had to do in the second half. We had to come back with a fire and a spark and we had to pick it up for Anfernee. Even though we didn't win the game, we still showed that we had a fight in our heart.
"Now I feel like everybody just knows that we've got to keep doing the same thing we've been doing -- keep trying to win, keep getting better and play with our heart."
Like Pearl told his team, it's next man up.
For a lot of teams, an injury to a key player this late in the year might be the breaking point. But Auburn's not one of those teams. The Tigers have battled through adversity all season. They've defied the odds and proven the doubters wrong every step of the way. Why stop now?
"There's no breaking point for us," Pearl said. "We have got a resilient, tenacious, gritty group of guys that are talented and hard-working and trusting and they rely on one another. We have a terrific team."
Greg Ostendorf is a Senior Writer for AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @greg_ostendorf