Auburn overcame a halftime deficit to win at South Carolina on Saturday, 66-63, extend its winning streak to eight games and remain No. 1 in Sunday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings.
That’s the good.
But that bad is really bad — specifically that Johni Broome left the game in the second half with what Auburn coach Bruce Pearl subsequently called a “significant sprain” of his left ankle. Imaging to come, obviously. And I’m not a doctor, even more obviously. But one thing I do know from covering this sport for more than two decades is that when basketball players turn ankles like that, missed games usually follow. So Auburn fans are reduced to crossing their fingers and just hoping it’s not as bad as significant ankle sprains often are.
“Johni Broome’s got a sprained ankle,” Pearl said afterward. “We’ll go back to Auburn and we’ll get an MRI and X-rays and see if there’s anything more than that.”
In a conference like the SEC, the clear-cut best league in the country, there are no simple weeks, point being that just about every game Broome misses could produce challenges for Auburn. And then there’s the race for National Player of the Year, a race that Broome has been leading but may not for much longer — in part because he’s expected to be sidelined for an undetermined amount of time, in part because Duke’s Cooper Flagg is coming on strong.
For what it’s worth, Evan Turner missed six games in the 2009-10 season and still won multiple NPOY honors, including the CBS Sports National Player of the Year Award. So there’s some wiggle room here for Broome. Regardless, this is not ideal, and depending on the severity of the injury, it could cost both the Tigers and Broome immensely.
As for my decision to leave Auburn at No. 1 despite an injury to its best player, I realize reasonable minds can disagree on this — but I’ve just never made a habit of punishing teams in the Top 25 And 1 for injuries until the injuries result in negative results. In other words, for the same reasons I didn’t punish UConn in the Top 25 And 1 after Liam McNeeley was sidelined with an ankle injury, I’m not going to punish Auburn in the Top 25 And 1 simply because Johni Broome is now (presumably) sidelined with an ankle injury. If or when the injury impacts the Tigers’ body of work negatively, I’ll adjust accordingly. But, for now, Auburn remains No. 1 in the Top 25 And 1 for the fifth consecutive morning.
