Auburn earns Final Four bid as Johni Broome impresses, returns from injury scare vs. MSU

ATLANTA — Johni Broome heard a pop.

Auburn’s star senior — the SEC player of the year and a first-team All-American — sat under the opposing hoop after taking an awkward fall. The expression on his face was calm, almost tranquil, but he cradled his right elbow with his dominant left hand, rubbing it slowly.

After a few moments — or an eternity, for those cheering for the Tigers — Broome was helped to his feet, moving gingerly on his left ankle, still clutching his elbow. He walked to the opposite end of the floor, off the court and back toward the locker room.

“He said he heard something pop in his arm,” said his father, John, who met his son as he trudged through the tunnel. “I was just praying that everything would be OK.”

There were 10 minutes, 37 seconds left in the game when Broome exited, No. 1 seed Auburn leading 50-40 against No. 2 seed Michigan State with a trip to the Final Four on the line. The lead was largely due to Broome, who had scored 22 points to go along with 12 rebounds. Without their best player — one of the top two players in men’s college basketball this season — the Tigers’ lead suddenly felt tenuous. But because of Broome and their depth, the Tigers prevailed 70-64, winning the South Region to advance to the Final Four in San Antonio.

Auburn’s 6-foot-10, 240-pound forward is its center of gravity, the rest of the team revolving around him on both ends of the floor. He moves exclusively at his own pace — never sped up, never out of control — often bending the arc of the game in his direction.

Bruce Pearl and the Auburn Tigers will make the program’s second Final Four trip after beating Michigan State on Sunday. (Brett Davis / Imagn Images)

It’s why, even as the Tigers continued to keep Michigan State at arm’s length, Broome’s absence was palpable, eyes darting back toward the bench with each break in play. Maybe this team would have enough to survive this game, to squeeze out an Elite Eight victory against coach Tom Izzo and a resilient group of Spartans. But how would Auburn win a national championship without Broome?

It’s why, as he emerged from the tunnel with less than six minutes remaining, his right elbow wrapped under a sleeve, the Auburn-heavy crowd roared with relief, then ballooned into a frenzy as he continued straight to the scorer’s table to check in.

“He comes right up to me and says, ‘If you need me, I can go,’” said Steven Pearl, an Auburn assistant and son of coach Bruce Pearl. “Then Dylan (Cardwell) raises his hand for a sub, and Johni just walks his ass to the scorer’s table.”

Less than a minute later, Broome snatched a defensive rebound with his left arm and popped out on a ball screen on offense, smoothly draining a 3-pointer. Auburn’s lead climbed back to 12. And the Auburn fans exploded.

Johni Broome. Absolute cinema

He returns from the locker room to a HUGE ovation and immediately knocks down the triple #MarchMadness @AuburnMBB pic.twitter.com/pCNSPfCZuV

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 30, 2025

“I went to the locker room. I checked my arm out,” Broome said. “The doctor said nothing was wrong, ‘You’re good. Nothing serious.’ So at that moment, I just wanted to help my teammates.”

He had X-rays taken on the elbow with his mom, Julie, and dad waiting with him, fighting back tears. But when the results came back negative — no fractures — doctors told Broome it was his decision whether to go back in the game. He didn’t hesitate.

“I was terrified for a second, but I saw the screen, everything came back negative, and I started smiling again,” John Broome said. “I told him if he could finish, then finish. If not, save it for another day. He was able to go out and finish.”

It was a quintessential Willis Reed moment, and — despite an unflagging late push by Michigan State — it was enough to seal Auburn’s semifinal fate.

“There are four teams in the country that are left, and Auburn is one of them,” Bruce Pearl said with a freshly cut net draped around his neck. “We couldn’t be happier.”

In what has been a chalk NCAA Tournament, the bracket’s top overall seed advanced to the second Final Four in program history, repeating the 2019 run under Pearl. It marks just the second time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 that all four No. 1 seeds have reached the Final Four, matching 2008. Auburn will face SEC rival Florida, which advanced out of the West Region.

The Tigers had to topple a pillar of March Madness to get here, staring down a Michigan State team that reached the Elite Eight through sheer force of will, led by a legendary coach in Izzo, who was seeking his ninth Final Four appearance. Pearl tried his hardest to play the underdog card Saturday, placing Izzo and the Spartans on a much-deserved pedestal. It was a preposterous ploy for an Auburn team that has been elite all season, but it wasn’t a pure bluff, either.

The Tigers were more talented than Michigan State, but there was a mental barrier to clear for an Auburn group that looked to be losing altitude down the stretch, losing three of its last four before the NCAA Tournament. It’s a team that advanced the hard way, forced to mount second-half comebacks in the second and third rounds, including a nine-point deficit against Michigan in the Sweet 16. And then it had to slay Izzo — Mr. March — and an opponent forged by blunt force, a slasher-film villain that can’t be destroyed.

“Michigan State is a historic, amazing, great team. Tom Izzo is a Hall of Fame coach,” Broome said. “(Coach Pearl) wasn’t lying. That’s a great team we just played.”

Auburn pulled it off with Broome in the starring role, finishing with a game-high 25 points and 14 rebounds, converting 10 of his 13 shots, including both 3-point attempts. Less than 48 hours after a slow start against Michigan on the same floor, Broome and the Tigers were all over the Spartans in a hurry, sprinting to a 23-8 lead courtesy of a 17-0 run. Broome had 17 points and 11 boards at the break, his second game in a row with a double-double by halftime. Freshman Tahaad Pettiford led a contributing cast with 10 points. He was the only other Tigers player in double figures, but the team collectively shot 43 percent from the field, turned the ball over only six times and limited Michigan State to just 16 free-throw attempts.

“Our guys really didn’t blink,” Steven Pearl said of the response when Broome went down. “Our biggest strength is our depth. We were built to make a deep run in March.”

That construction took place across multiple seasons, cobbling together a roster of versatile yet complementary parts. Bruce Pearl has a history of uncovering diamonds in the rough — what Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes, a former Pearl assistant, once described as “Burger King All-Americans.” That’s how Pearl developed Broome, a three-year transfer from Morehead State. And Chad Baker-Mazara, a two-year transfer who started at Duquesne. And Denver Jones, another two-year transfer from FIU. And Cardwell, a fifth-year senior leader and defensive stalwart. Pettiford, an actual McDonald’s All-American and highly touted prospect, is the exception, but Pearl still got him to buy in, to come off the bench and fall in line behind Cardwell and Broome.

It hasn’t always been smooth skies — there was an infamous plane incident early in the season and Cardwell’s breakfast-based message just last week — but after 32 wins, an SEC regular-season title and now a trip to the Final Four, the proof is self-evident.

“We stayed together through a lot of adversity,” said Steven Pearl, standing on a thin layer of confetti, tucking a piece of net into his Final Four hat. “We went through a lot of s— together this year, and our guys just stayed connected.”

It was enough to withstand Michigan State’s finishing plus-two in the rebounding battle and making a flurry of late baskets to pull within six. Leading scorers Jaxon Kohler (17) and Jaden Akins (15) did most of their damage in the second half, but the Spartans shot just 34 percent and led only once, at 8-6 in the game’s opening minutes. Pearl and Izzo had faced off only once prior as head coaches, also in the Elite Eight in 2010 when Pearl was at Tennessee. Izzo won that first battle. Sunday, Pearl balanced it out.

“If I’m gonna get to the Final Four, if Auburn is gonna get to the Final Four,” Pearl said, “might as well do it against a great program like Michigan State and a great coach like Tom Izzo.”

Auburn is no Cinderella, but it’s not a legacy. It’s a football school that Pearl has built into a legit basketball contender during his 11 seasons. And after three consecutive first-weekend exits, he has the Tigers back in the Final Four, a wire-to-wire powerhouse in a season defined by them.

Now, with the program’s first national championship in reach — a seemingly impossible precipice before Pearl’s arrival — the Tigers will first have to get through Florida, which beat Auburn on its home floor in February in the season’s lone meeting of the two teams. Broome’s status is sure to remain a topic in the days ahead, and Pearl acknowledged Auburn won’t know the full extent of the injury until Monday.

“Whether it’s a slight hyperextension or whatever it was,” Pearl said. “Doctors said there was no damage. I bet you he’s pretty sore tomorrow, though.”

But Sunday evening, with a bag of ice wrapped around his elbow and another net draped around his neck, Broome wasn’t worrying about it.

“All glory to God again for allowing me to be healthy,” he said. “To stand on top of the ladder in front of all the Auburn fans … looking down and seeing my teammates, the whole Auburn family. It just means the world to me.”

(Photo: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)