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The 2024 Maui Invitational featured a loaded field: North Carolina, UConn, Iowa State, Michigan State, Auburn, Memphis, Colorado, and Dayton. By the end of it all, it was Bruce Pearl's Auburn team that knocked off Penny Hardaway's Memphis Tigers in the title game on Wednesday night. Pearl's reaction after winning the tournament was priceless, and Johni Broome showed why he should be in the Player of the Year conversation.
Auburn now has kicked off the season with an undefeated 7-0 record, including wins over top 25 teams Houston (after the bizarre plane incident), Iowa State, and North Carolina. After a strong start to the season, Auburn is right in the thick of the early national title conversation, especially with a massive amount of top-5 upsets this season.
As such, Auburn is a legitimate title contender in a way-too-early look at the 2025 NCAA Tournament. Here are a few reasons why Auburn could make a run at cutting down the nets at the Alamodome in April 2025.
Bruce Pearl can coach
Pearl has been a college basketball head coach since 1992. This includes stops at Southern Indiana, Milwaukee, Tennessee, and now Auburn. Entering this season, he compiled a 214-119 record during his time, including 13 trips to the NCAA Tournament and nine trips to the NCAA Division II tournament.
Pearl won a Division II national title with Southern Indiana in the 1994-95 season and was runner-up in 1993-94. He took Tennessee to the NCAA Tournament in each of the six seasons he was there, with one Elite Eight and two Sweet 16 trips.
Pearl then took Auburn to the Final Four in the 2019 NCAA Tournament before the Tigers fell to Virginia by one point. All in all, Pearl has had success, but a self-imposed ban and some vacated wins due to the Chuck Person situation raised some eyebrows.
Nonetheless, Pearl has Auburn playing like a top team in the country once again, and the Tigers are showing their true colors after winning a total of 74 games in the past three seasons entering 2024-25.
The SEC is a gauntlet
The SEC has been known for an incredibly difficult schedule in football. Recently, the SEC has garnered a lot of respect in basketball, and this season is no exception. Entering this week, a total of nine teams were ranked in the top 25:
4) Auburn
7) Tennessee
8) Kentucky
9) Alabama
18) Florida
19) Arkansas
23) Ole Miss
25) Mississippi State
Even the Oklahoma Sooners have started the year 5-0, and Texas is another team that could make some noise. So, now Auburn has to run through this gauntlet conference schedule, which will set them up nicely for an NCAA Tournament run,
Auburn faces Duke on Wednesday and then Purdue at the end of December before SEC play. The conference schedule has a string of games where Auburn plays Alabama and Arkansas back-to-back and they finish the year facing Ole Miss, Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Alabama, all of whom are ranked in the top 25 as of now.
Auburn's Johni Broome is a superstar
If you didn't know who Johni Broome was before, now you do. The senior forward/center broke out at the Maui Invitational on a national stage. In 2023-2024, Broome averaged 16,5 points per game with 8.6 rebounds. But, he recorded a double-double in all three games in Maui. Broome had 21 and 10 against Iowa State, 23 and 19 against North Carolina, and 21 and 16 in the title game over Memphis as Broome recorded some impressive milestones. Broome also had a total of nine blocks and 13 assists in those games, so he is doing it all on the court.
Broome also had the game-winning tip-in on the first day against Iowa State in an unreal 18-point come-from-behind victory.
JOHNI BROOME WITH 1.3 LEFT!! #4 AUBURN COMES BACK FROM 18 DOWN TO WIN 83-81 OVER #5 IOWA STATE IN MAUI!! https://t.co/p4UNVDe9ZF
— NCAA Buzzer Beaters & Game Winners (@NCAABuzzerBters) November 26, 2024
Sure, Duke's Cooper Flagg and Rutgers' Dylan Harper are having sensational starts, but Broome should be in the Player of the Year conversation. Broome is filling up the stat sheet in essentially every category, and Auburn has already played three top-25 teams with more coming soon. If he keeps up at this rate, he will be in the POTY conversation and Auburn should be a national title contender come March.
