After a two-year hiatus, Auburn Athletics and the City of Auburn are bringing back Tipoff at Toomer's on Thursday Oct. 17 to begin the 2024-25 men's and women's basketball seasons. The event is set to return to Toomer's Corner with an expanded array of festivities, including a headlining concert by country music icon Cole Swindell.
The Tipoff at Toomer's event was first held in 2019 to welcome the new Auburn basketball season. For the event, a basketball court was built on Toomer's Corner, where the Auburn men's and women's basketball teams each took part in a three-point contest, a mini-scrimmage and a dunk contest.
Following a largely positive reception from Auburn students and fans, the event was scheduled to recur annually, but was later put on pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic and would see a return in 2021.
For this year's event, downtown Auburn will be open to the public during the entire day for shopping and dining before Tipoff at Toomer's. The event is set to open at 5:30 p.m. and will officially begin with the opening of the Tipoff Market, a marketplace featuring a multitude of Auburn's downtown merchants.
Families will also be able to visit the Coca-Cola Fan Zone at this time, located on Samford Lawn. At the intersection of Magnolia and South College, fans will get the opportunity to surround the newly redesigned Auburn Bank basketball court to get an exciting preview of both the men's and women's basketball teams, with the basketball events being hosted by men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl and women's basketball coach Johnnie Harris. Basketball festivities are scheduled for a 6:30 p.m. start.
At the conclusion of the events, coaches and student-athletes will move to an autograph session along South College Street at 7:30 p.m. There, Auburn fans can meet and interact with the teams following the basketball action. The session will be presented by Momma Goldberg's Deli and is in partnership with On to Victory, Auburn's official NIL collective.
Following the basketball portion of the evening, the event will conclude with an 8:15 p.m. performance by country music artist Cole Swindell at the Capstone Building Corp stage, which will be located on Toomer's Corner.
The multi-platinum singer-songwriter has seen 11 singles reach the Billboard Top 100, and his most recent album, 2022's Stereotype, reached the sixth spot on the US Top Country Albums list. A Georgia native, Swindell has written songs for Luke Bryan, Thomas Rhett and Scotty McCreery, and has also collaborated with Florida Georgia Line and Chris Young. Swindell's 75-minute performance serves as the exciting cap to the evening's events.
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