LAHAINA, Hawaii — The smiling said it all.
To understand how Tuesday’s Maui Invitational semifinal went between No. 4 Auburn and No. 12 North Carolina, you needed to look no further than the teams’ two benches inside the Lahaina Civic Center.
On Auburn’s side? Joking, laughing, bench players practicing their best celebrations.
On North Carolina’s? Puckered lips, stoic stares — and by the end of Auburn’s eventual 85-72 win, hung heads.
A day after North Carolina completed an all-time comeback versus Dayton, the Tigers buried the Tar Heels so deep that Hubert Davis’ team couldn’t muster similar magic. Instead, Bruce Pearl’s Auburn team beat its third top-12 opponent in its first six games — none of them at home — and advanced to face Memphis in the Maui Invitational championship game. Leading the way, again, was All-American center Johni Broome, who had 18 first half points before eventually finishing with a game-high 23, plus 19 boards.
Perhaps the game’s opening minutes, which were something straight out of North Carolina’s nightmares, were a sign of what was to come. This was always going to be a bad matchup for UNC — which starts three sub-6-foot-3 guards — considering Auburn’s size, but still. Auburn, largely behind Broome’s bruising efforts on the interior, jumped out to a 21-6 lead, looking every bit like the best team in the nation. Davis, meanwhile, did his best impression of Anger from “Inside Out,” practically blowing his top as the Tigers rebounded and scored at will over his tiny Tar Heels.
And it’s hard to blame him; Broome single-handedly outscored UNC for almost the first eight minutes, before a Ven-Allen Lubin layup finally gave the Tar Heels 12 to Broome’s then-11.
But that Lubin layup, while consequential in its own right, was also part of something much more important: UNC racing to its own 15-2 run, including 11 straight, most of which came in the teeth of the Tigers’ defense. (It should be noted that Broome was on the bench for a not-insignificant portion of North Carolina’s comeback.) The Tigers may have undeniably been the bigger team, with Broome a matchup-beater North Carolina couldn’t compete with, but also true? Auburn’s guards couldn’t keep up with UNC’s, especially breakout junior Seth Trimble, whose nine first-half points led UNC at the break.
In one way, advantage Auburn. In another, advantage UNC. And thus, a one-sided whooping turned into a track meet, with the Tigers clinging onto a 40-32 lead at the break.
But then the second half began…or at least it did for Auburn. Not so much for UNC. It was in many ways like the game’s opening minutes all over again, a horror track for the Tar Heels: Auburn on a 12-2 run, extending the lead to 18.
UNC, of course, has been in this position before — twice, actually: at Kansas, back in the season’s opening week, and Monday, when it trailed Dayton by 21 before completing the largest comeback in school history since 1993. The difference? Against Dayton, Davis’ team was able to slowly chip away at the lead, charting a comeback in four-minute chunks. But Auburn had an answer seemingly any time UNC strung together multiple possessions. Case in point: after the Tar Heels scored five straight midway through the half, and seemed to be stealing momentum, Auburn stole the ball from Trimble with 10:45 left and turned it into a Chaney Johnson dunk on the other end. Back to 16, and staring up at a seeming mountain.
OH MYYYY🤯 pic.twitter.com/8lP4LXne0I
— Auburn Basketball (@AuburnMBB) November 27, 2024
And while Auburn let fiveUNC players score at least 10 points, it never let anyone in particular get hot. The proof? The Tar Heels didn’t have a single double-digit scorer for the first 30 minutes of the game, before Trimble (a team-high 17), RJ Davis, Elliot Cadeau, and Lubin all got there.
Ultimately, once Auburn scored early in the second half, UNC never got it closer than 10. The Tigers were simply too tall, too tough and too good.
And, truthfully, too deserving of playing in Wednesday’s final.
Required reading
(Photo: Darryl Oumi / Getty Images)
