The Auburn men’s basketball team suffered the literal ‘thrill of victory, agony of defeat’ on Tuesday night when a last-second potential game-winner buzzer beater was ruled to be too late.
The Tigers’ home game against Texas A&M came down to the wire, and Auburn was down 90-88 with 0.6 seconds on the clock.
Auburn inbounded the ball and KeShawn Murphy caught it in the frontcourt, heaving a desperation shot that went right through the net and setting off a raucous celebration at Neville Arena.
Officials immediately blew their whistles while Auburn and its fans celebrated, then went to the scorer’s table to confirm whether the shot was good. It wasn’t, and the Aggies started a celebration of their own, leaving the Tigers stunned.
‘I don’t have a clear understanding still,’ Auburn head coach Steven Pearl said after the game. ‘I still gotta gather more information and get an understanding as to what their determination was … Just from the angles that I saw, it looked like the ball was out of his hands on the red light, on the scoreboard that we were looking at. But I would imagine that they had a different angle they were looking at to determine the ball wasn’t out of his hands.’
Texas A&M, for its part, had some fun at the expense of the despondent Tigers after the game, with coach Bucky McMillan addressing Aggie fans and requesting they aren’t ‘a millisecond late’ coming to the next game at Reed Arena.
The Aggies (12-3, 2-0 SEC ), who rallied from a 16-point second-half deficit, were led by Pop Isaacs, who scored 21 points off the bench. Keyshawn Hall had 32 points and 12 rebounds for Auburn (9-6, 0-2).