Get ready for the Maui Bump: Auburn is the best team and Johni Broome is the best player in college basketball

LAHAINA, Hawaii — The Auburn Tigers very much look like the best team in college basketball. 

I understand No. 1 Kansas is still undefeated and will continue to hold the top ranking into December after beating No. 11 Duke while shorthanded Tuesday night in Las Vegas. But no team has been as consistently impressive against higher-ranked competition than the fourth-ranked Tigers. The latest chapter chiseled into their tremendous early season résumé was recorded with ease Wednesday afternoon at the Lahaina Civic Center. Bruce Pearl’s Tigers swaggered their way to a 90-76 win over a Memphis team that had looked ultra-confident and of top-20 quality in beating No. 2 Connecticut and Michigan State the prior two days. 

It’s the first Maui championship in school history and the second that Auburn coach Bruce Pearl’s been a part of; he was on the 1987-88 staff at Iowa that won it all in this cozy gym on the hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Pearl’s face is part of a big mural of well-known coaches and players who’ve come here over the years. When he walked in and saw it, he thought it wasn’t deserving.

“I saw my picture up there on the wall, and it was like Bill Self and Mike Krzyzewski and Tom Izzo, and I’m like, what am I doing up here? Come on,” Pearl said. 

Now it’s deserved. The Tigers won three games in three days to run their record to 7-0 and are positively roaring into December.

Auburn is the third SEC team ever to win Maui, which began in 1984, joining Vanderbilt in 1986 and Kentucky in 1993. 

Championships in this beautiful land can often provide the ever-coveted “Maui bump.” You win three games in three days here, it portends well for your season. (Five times a Maui champ has gone on to win March Madness, and seven former NCAA champs were in Maui fields the same season they played in this bracket.) Normally, champions have to beat at least two top 25-quality teams, if not three. Over the past 72 hours, Auburn took on an unofficial trio in that realm: No. 5 Iowa State, then No. 12 North Carolina, then unranked, but red-hot, Memphis. 

There’s a lot of big stories bubbling up in college basketball in the first few weeks of the season; Auburn showing out as the best-looking team is at the top of the list. 

If you’d like to debate who is the No. 1 team, you can’t do the same about the top player. That’s Auburn’s Johni Broome, the 6-10 fifth-year senior comfortably posting the best numbers in college hoops, who had a phenomenal three-game run here in Lahaina. Broome went on the type of run that will be remembered and associated with Auburn basketball and the Maui Invitational for a long time. 

“He’s the best player in college basketball.”

Those aren’t Pearl’s words. That’s Iowa State coach TJ Otzelberger, who said that to me from the corner of the gym Wednesday as he took a quick peek in on Auburn-Memphis before heading back to the hotel following his team’s cruise-control 99-71 win over Colorado. Otzelberger got an up-close look at Broome’s big-time capabilities two days ago. The Tigers were in a spot to win a trophy on Wednesday because of Broome’s tip-in winner in Monday’s quarterfinals. If this is going to be a special season for the Tigers, this will be part of the montage. 

Over three games here in paradise, Broome averaged 21.7 points, 15.0 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 4.0 blocks. It’s one of the best stat lines ever by a player in this event. His stranglehold on national player of the year status is backed up by his standing at KenPom.com’s kPOY tracker. There is a gulf almost as wide as the distance from the Pacific Ocean to the mainland between Broome and the newbie in second place, Duke’s Cooper Flagg.

Johni, you are now the November frontrunner for player of the year in college basketball. What do you have to say about that?

“The player of the year don’t really matter to me. I care about winning,” Broome said shortly after winning the Maui Invitational MVP trophy following his 21-point, 16-rebound, six-assist, four-block showing against the Tigers.

For the third day in a row he was a stat monster and matchup paradox. Broome set the tone early, logging nine points, five rebounds, three assists and three blocks in the first nine minutes. That’s laughable. 

Memphis was down 9-0 to start and never had a shot. Broome doused Memphis’ will within minutes, including a 3-pointer that caused separation. Broome’s fifth straight game with a double-double made him the first Auburn player to do that since Jeff Moore in 1988.

“Johni has grown a great deal,” Pearl said, reflecting back to when Broome came to Auburn a few years ago after starting at Morehead State. “He’s matured. One of the things he talked about is, ‘Coach trusts me.’ I try to hold him accountable. I try to have high expectations for them. So we knock heads, because I’m not satisfied. I know you’re capable of more. But he’s responded really, really, really well to that. But he’s matured. He’s become a really good leader on this team.”

Great teams are never built around one player. Auburn’s returning core is what has Tigers fans hopeful for a special run over the next four months. Auburn has managed to build out a squad that has a star big man but is incredibly deep and running a slick offense. The Tigers are putting up an adjusted 125.1 points per 100 possessions, which beats all other teams in the sport. Nine players average between 15 and 30 minutes; six are in double-digit scoring. 

“We’re just a tough scout,” senior big Dylan Cardwell said. “Coach Pearl brought in some guys that, when you’re scouting guys, you don’t know who to stop. I’m sure I wasn’t on anybody’s scouting report offensively and then I just go off for 18. You don’t know who it’s going to be.”

The defense was outstanding, too. Denver Jones has built himself into an outstanding on-ball defender. He might be the tops in the sport, and if not, very few are sitting at his table. A day after holding All-American candidate RJ Davis to 12 points, he stifled Tyrese Hunter. The Memphis guard had been playing like the best transfer in the country … and then didn’t get a bucket until 16:34 was left  in the game. 

He finished with a season-low 11 points. 

If this team approaches every game the way it approached the three here in Maui, it’s going to be a top seed in March. 

And to think, this could’ve been a very different story.

Auburn had that bizarre plane incident at that start of the season that could have set a tone of dysfunction for a talented team. Instead, the opposite has happened. Pearl’s players beat top-five Houston. Then they flew across the ocean and beat top-five Iowa State, followed by top-15 North Carolina and an outright dismissal of a surging Memphis team that’s probably going to be ranked next week. 

To that end, Pearl made sure to make a point about this, and his players, in the postgame press conference. 

“Anybody that says student-athletes have changed, anybody that says this is not all about the student-athletes, anybody want to complain about this or that, this is old-school pride, old-school love of their teammates, love their coaches, love their university — Kids haven’t changed. Kids want to be coached,” Pearl said. “They want to be held accountable. They want to be believed-in, and they want to be held to a high standard. That’s just not changed. A lot of things around our game have changed, but this should give you guys and everybody watching hope because it’s all about these kids and teaching them.”

Everything seems attainable and within their control. They’re at a place now that most teams need months to work toward.

Now we await on the Maui Bump’s mojo. Auburn came here for the first time in 2018. That was the field that famously had Zion Williamson’s Duke team playing Gonzaga and Rui Hachimura in the championship. But those teams didn’t make the 2019 Final Four. Auburn did. 

This team is definitely better than that one. Carrying November excellence all the way to April is super challenging. But these Tigers have the pieces, offense, experience and camaraderie to do it. They’ll get little time to bask in the sunshine. Next up is a road test against No. 11 Duke on Wednesday. 

Johni Broome vs. Cooper Flagg. Duke vs. Auburn. It could be a Final Four matchup in the first week of December. Is this shaping up to be a great season or what?