Cinmeon Bowers suspension overshadows end of Auburn's SEC Tournament run

NASHVILLE – The only way to tarnish the lore from what was Auburn's magical, unexpected run in the SEC Tournament was for a distraction to take away from the incredible accomplishments of the resilient Tigers.

Though Cinmeon Bowers' suspension was by no means the deciding factor in No. 13 seed Auburn's 91-67 rout at the hands of top-ranked Kentucky in the SEC Tournament semifinals Saturday afternoon at Bridgestone Arena, his "potential rules violation" overshadowed his team's finale.

"It's obviously in the very early stages," Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. "We hope that when we finish looking into the matter everything is OK."

Pearl, who was made aware of the matter following Friday's quarterfinal win over LSU, would not specify the nature of Bowers' alleged misstep, reiterating it was "a possible rules violation, but it was enough that we felt like we wanted to be on the safe side."

Despite being on the Auburn bench for the entirety of the onslaught, Bowers was not available for postgame interviews.

It is not the first time Bowers has had an issue complying with rules while at Auburn, as he is believed to have committed an NCAA secondary violation in December when a picture he posed for at an Atlanta retailer was posted to social media by the business, which the school was made aware of.

"The good way outweighs the bad," Pearl said. "He's done a lot of really positive things. Again, I'm confident that we will get it resolved (and) I'm hopeful that it's going to be OK."

Nothing will take away from the three wins in three days, the best SEC Tournament run for the program since winning the conference title in 1985, but Bowers, and the unspecified nature of his possible indiscretion, cast an unnecessary cloud over the final act of what was one of the best stories in college basketball during championship week.

Teammates learned they would have to play without Bowers, who averaged 12.1 points and 9.6 rebounds while starting all 34 previous games this season, Saturday morning at the arena.

"It would have bene a lot different," guard K.T. Harrell said. "He's a tough matchup and the way he's been playing defensively has been really good. We knew we would have to play 10 times better without him and we gave it all we could."

Auburn started 6-foot-5 walk-on Devin Waddell, who came in averaging 0.5 points, in place of Bowers and Malcolm Canada (16 points) at power forward for the suspended Jordon Granger, who was out due to his Flagrant 2 foul and ejection from Friday's game.

"Not having both of them made it really difficult to win," Pearl said of Bowers and Granger. "We had them both (at Kentucky on Feb. 21) and got beat by five touchdowns so it wasn't like … I just think from a team standpoint it's tough to have this be your last game and not be able to play and we would have loved to be able to go into the game as a unit."

Backup center Trayvon Reed (7-foot-2), who had one point and two rebounds in his first action in six games, was the only player on the Auburn roster over 6-foot-9, against a Wildcats team whose starting lineup all tops 6-foot-6.

Antoine Mason returned to the starting lineup for the first time since Feb. 24 and scored 23 points, his most since putting up 29 against the Wildcats at Rupp Arena,

"You want to show that you can compete with best teams," Mason said. "That was the reason why I came here, was to play against Kentucky."

Harrell added 13 while shooting just 1-for-12 from the field and 11-for-12 from the foul line as the roster full of skyscraping Wildcats obstructed nearly every shot.

"We wanted to make sure Harrell was not the guy to hurt us," Kentucky coach John Calipari said. "I told our guys prior to the game, I said, 'Let's look at this as a NCAA tournament game and they got a guy that can go for 40.' We're going to make sure that we make that tough."

"We made it all the way to the semifinals and finally go to see results from all the hard work that I put in and we put in as a team," said Harrell, the league's leading scorer. "To play against the No. 1 team in the country in my last game, it gets no better than that."

Willie Cauley-Stein scored 18 points to lead five players in double-figures for Kentucky (33-0), which advances to play No. 2 seed Arkansas in the SEC Tournament final at noon Sunday.

Auburn (15-20) led 2-0 for 13 seconds but from there the onslaught was on, though the 24-point underdog Tigers kept it relatively close, considering the extraordinary circumstances, until midway through the second half.

Mason cut the gap to 57-44 with 14:45 to go but Kentucky responded with a 14-0 run to blow the game open.

Pearl's first season on the Plains came to a close on Saturday but he and his resilient squad gave a beleaguered program and its starving fan base a lot to be proud of in the last week and much to look forward to in the future.

"We made it all the way to the semifinals and finally go to see results from all the hard work that I put in and we put in as a team," said Harrell, the league's leading scorer. "To play against the No. 1 team in the country in my last game, it gets no better than that."