GREENVILLE, S.C.— Auburn’s Khady Leye recorded her second double-double of the year and hit the game-winning layup with 5.2 seconds left to send the Tigers through to the second round of the SEC Tournament, defeating Texas A&M 50-49 Wednesday night.
“It was a total team effort,” Auburn head coach Larry Vickers said. “If anybody’s seen us play this year, we're not a group that wins shootouts, but a rock fight, we win those. I was super proud of them the way they competed, got rebounds, played together as a unit.
“We have to hold teams below 60, because today we shot 4 for 18 (from 3-point range). Two of them came in the last four minutes or so. Because of that, we know on every possession defensively, every rebound, it just means so much to our group. I thought today -- sometimes on the road we don't do that very well, but I thought today we did a good job.”
Trailing 49-48 with less than 20 seconds to play, Vickers drew up a play to get Leye one-on-one at the elbow. She drove to the basket and banked in the layup to put the Tigers in front with 5.2 seconds to play.
After an Aggie timeout to advance, Syriah Daniels got a hand on Janae Kent’s potential game-winning 3-pointer, and Leye pulled down her career-high 15th rebound as time expired.
“I knew that was coming, that drive was coming, because we did that play in that game multiple times, and she was sitting low,” Leye said. “I had the advantage, so I took it. My teammates believed in me, too.”
Leye finished with 11 points, 15 rebounds and four assists to lead the Tigers on a night when points were at a premium. Kaitlyn Duhon added 14 points and seven rebounds, her second straight big game against Texas A&M; she scored a career-high 23 their first meeting three weeks ago.
Harissoum Coulibaly added 11 points, and Ja’Mia Harris had a season-high four steals.
Auburn had its biggest rebounding margin in SEC play, out-rebounding the Aggies 38-26. The Tigers also controlled the paint offensively with 28 of their 50 points coming inside.
A two-point Auburn lead headed to the fourth quarter turned into a five-point deficit as the Tigers went seven minutes without a field goal to open the final period. Two free throws from Coulibaly cut the deficit to 43-40 just before the media timeout.
An offensive rebound and kick-out to Harris led to her first trey of the game, tying the score at 43-43.
A&M answered immediately at the other end to move back ahead by two, but Mya Petticord knocked down a triple of her own to put the Tigers back in front 46-45. A Duhon layup off an Aggie turnover pushed the Auburn advantage to 48-45 with just over 90 seconds to play.
The Aggies got within one on a Lauren Ware layup with 49 seconds left, then got a stop and drew an Auburn foul. Kent made both free throws to push the Aggies ahead by one, setting up Leye’s game-winner in the closing seconds.
Neither team ever led by double-digits, and the lead changed hands eight times.
Ny’Ceara Pryor led all scorers with 25 points and also added four points and six steals for Texas A&M. The Aggies were without leading rebounder Fatmata Janneh for the second half after she suffered an injury just before halftime.
Auburn became the first 15-seed to win an SEC Tournament game. The Tigers (15-16) will take on No. 24 Ole Miss (21-10), seeded seventh in the tournament, in Thursday’s second round. Game time is 5 p.m. CT with the broadcast on SEC Network and the Auburn Sports Network.
“We know that they're one of the most physical teams in our league,” Vickers said of Ole Miss. “Christeen (Iwuala), she put on a field day our first game in Birmingham, and we're going to have to match her size and her intensity as well as Cotie (McMahon).
“We're going to have to just rest up and figure out how we're going to make those adjustments from the first game to this game.”