Committing to a school that had not had a winning record in nearly a decade, it was unthinkable for seniors Bryce Brown and Horace Spencer to envision back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament. But that’s exactly what will likely happen come Selection Sunday.
Ahead of their final game in Auburn Arena against No. 5 Tennessee, it’s difficult to spend time reflecting, but Brown can still remember a time when a game against a top-5 team would have just been a formality.
“It definitely doesn't feel like that long ago,” Brown said. “We try to put that stuff in the past. Those seasons were very hard, playing, just being around campus.”
The dark days are over, however, and the team that will take the court Saturday appears to be a completely different program than the team that went 11-20 their freshman season.
“I am beeping our horn a little bit, because it is for them; it is for those seniors,” head coach Bruce Pearl said. “I think the biggest thing that I would say about that is they remember what defeat tasted like. They remember what beatdowns tasted like, and we’ve been beat down a time or two… It hasn’t happened often. It used to happen a lot, and I do think that there have been so many times in our locker room, whether it be halftime of the Alabama game or other times when those guys have talked about what it was like and that it’s not that way anymore.”
The senior class, which also includes junior college transfer Malik Dunbar and former walk-on Cole Blackstock, has been a part of the renaissance of the program and played integral roles in winning the 2017-18 regular season SEC Championship.
“I'm pretty sure it caught a lot of us off guard and shocked, just the way we re-cooperated and bonded that next year,” Brown said about winning the regular-season championship. “We were able to cut down the nets. Like coach says, it takes something special. I feel like we made a lot of sacrifices in order for that to happen that year.”
In that championship run, the team had the best overall record since 1999, and with their most recent win against Alabama, Auburn locked in the first back-to-back seasons with double-digit conference wins since 1975.
“Having coached for as long as I’ve coached, I can tell you… coaches can help teams win games,” Pearl said. “Only really, truly players can either win championships or be able to, you know, do things like this team has done.”
The legacies of the senior class will be forever cemented in the history books for the transformation of the program, but Pearl said more than that, it’s been an honor to watch the group develop as people, and Senior Day will be a perfect way to commemorate their college careers.
“It’s a great group,” Pearl said. “It’s a great group. It’ll be great for us to recognize their accomplishments on and off the court.”
Spencer, a 6-foot-8 forward from Philadelphia, is known for getting his hands dirty on the court. Never concerned with finesse or taking a game over offensively, he makes his presence felt in setting hard picks for scorers, diving after loose balls and banging in the post.
But what his coach thinks truly speaks to the person Spencer has become is embracing the role of becoming a father to his son Avery while being a student-athlete.
“It’s just been a blessing watching Horace grow up into a man and watching him accept his responsibility as a father, knowing at the end of this summer he’s on track to graduate and what it means to him and his family and Avery,” Pearl said.
Starting every game of the past two seasons, Brown leads the team in scoring and is a spark plug that is always a threat to go on a game-changing hot streak.
Nearly any given time, Brown can be seen putting up extra shots after practice with his dad, and he recently moved into fifth place on the all-time SEC list for 3-point field goals with 341 makes and is primed to keep rising.
“Bryce Brown has grown so much on and off the court,” Pearl said. “I’m so blessed to have Bryce and his family in my life. We’re all really close. And just another great example of both of those guys it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish and what a place like Auburn can do with athletics, with a spiritual life for both men and the Auburn Family."
After transferring from the College of Central Florida, Dunbar took on the role of filling whatever gaps the team needs from game to game. His minutes have continued to increase over time, and if he’s not in the starting lineup, he’s quick off the bench.
Dunbar, too, has embraced the additional responsibility of being a father. Following the junior college career, he is set to graduate over the summer.
“Malik [is] another father that has accepted the responsibilities of being a dad and a student-athlete,” Pearl said. “Malik has such great energy, is a great teammate.”
Pearl believes each of the three seniors will have successful professional careers wherever that may be, but over the course of their collegiate careers, he has seen them all develop unselfish, team mentalities.
“There have been times all three of those guys have been frustrated — not able to play a bigger role or whatever, but affected winning so much and made sacrifices and grown,” Pearl said.
Blackstock, who walked on his freshman year, recently earned a scholarship after years of putting in work in the thankless role of a scout-team player. The 6-foot-9 power forward helped prepare his teammates behind the scenes to have a successful on-the-court product.
“Cole worked every day in practice,” Pearl said. “He had to go up against — from Cinmeon Bowers to Austin to Horace to Anfernee and did such a great job on the scout team.”
Set to graduate with a degree in the School of Engineering, Blackstock embodies all that it means to be a student-athlete, Pearl added.
From personal growth to the turnaround of a program, the senior group has seen the highs and lows on and off the court, and they have each contributed to a culture change within the program that Pearl envisioned when he took over just before their freshmen year.
With the seniors’ careers coming to a close, the team has a much vaster imagination of post-season possibilities than just a few years ago
“Having lost early on has definitely been a contributing factor to our guys not wanting to go back to that point,” Pearl said. “This season could have easily been that; there’s a lot of really good teams in our league that are going to finish eighth and ninth and 10th and all the way down, and Auburn will not be one of those teams.”
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