March 15, 2018
By Greg Ostendorf
AuburnTigers.com
SAN DIEGO -- As the voice of the Auburn Tigers, Rod Bramblett has called everything from the BCS national championship to the Kick Six to a College World Series. But despite covering the basketball team for the past 15 seasons, he's never called a game in the NCAA Tournament.
That will change Friday when Auburn takes on Charleston in its first appearance in the Big Dance since the 2002-2003 season.
"I've been so fortunate with two national championship games, a couple of College World Series trips, a lot of other big games in football and baseball, but never the NCAA Tournament," Bramblett said. "It really is very special. I guess I'm kind of like the players in the sense that I've got a job to do -- you've still got to go out and call the game and do your job -- but you want to enjoy the experience, too, because it's been so long."
Ironically, it was after that 2002-2003 season that Bramblett took over the play-calling duties in both football and basketball from Jim Fyffe. In fact, the last game Fyffe ever called during his illustrious career as at Auburn was the loss to Syracuse in the Sweet Sixteen that year.
After a while, Bramblett started to think that maybe he was the reason the Tigers couldn't find a way back to the NCAA Tournament.
"I knew you're probably not going to go every single year, but I thought `I'm going to get to do this eventually,'" he said. "I never thought it would be 15 years."
However, early on this season, Bramblett knew this year's team was capable of ending that drought. When Auburn went to Murray State and battled its way a victory, he knew that Bruce Pearl had a good basketball team. And then a month later when the Tigers went to Missouri and ran the home team out of its own gym, he knew this team was going dancing.
There have been bumps in the road along the way. There has been adversity. But March is here, and sure enough, Auburn is back playing in the NCAA Tournament.
Calling the game Friday will be significant for Bramblett, but he doesn't want to stop at one. He wants to call two, three, six games in this year's tournament. It's the same for Auburn. Making the Big Dance is a major accomplishment, but why stop there?
"This team deserves -- after what they went through before the season, after the loss of Anfernee McLemore, and yet they still led wire to wire in the league and won the conference championship -- this team deserves to win a game in the NCAA Tournament," Bramblett said.
"Will it happen? I don't know. College of Charleston's really good. Auburn will have to play well. But they deserve to win a game. They deserve to win two games. To me, now you're here and now you don't want to go home after just a few days in San Diego. You want to be making plans for Omaha come Sunday night. This team deserves to win in this tournament."
Greg Ostendorf is a Senior Writer for AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @greg_ostendorf