SALT LAKE CITY — It took four minutes for Jared Harper to realize what Bryce Brown's night would look like.

The Auburn point guard dished the ball to the corner, one of Brown's favorite spots on the floor. Two Kansas defenders were late to close out. You can't be late to close out on Brown. He dropped his first 3-pointer of the game at the 16-minute mark to give Auburn a 12-5 lead and force a quick Kansas timeout.

Brown had just gotten started.

"When he hit the first one, I knew it was going to be a great game for him," Harper said.

Harper's instincts were right.

Less than two minutes later, Brown had already hit two more from deep. As he did so, Brown walked toward half court with his hand cupped behind his ear as if to say: I can't hear you. The Auburn faithful in attendance were loud and proud. But Brown had seen a lot of the other blue, and he wondered where all the noise had gone to from that side.

"I was just doing that because I couldn’t hear their fans," Brown said, laughing. "They got kinda quiet. I seen a lot of the other color of blue. I seen their blue. I just wanted to say, ‘I don’t really hear y’all like that.’"

Even then, Brown's shooting clinic had only just begun.

The Auburn senior — who moved into solo second all-time in career 3-pointers made by an SEC player — started out the game 5-for-5 from deep. He didn't miss his first shot of the game until the 3:45 mark in the first half. By that point, Auburn already led 44-23.

The rim in Vivint Smarthome Arena couldn't have looked any bigger.

"It looked huge. I wish it always looked like that. It looked huge. My teammates hit me and gave me opportunities to make shots," Brown said. "I hope it looks like that next week."

Brown's 3-point barrage tailed off some after that.

But only by his lofty standards.

He finished with a game-high 25 points on 7-of-11 shooting from 3-point range. Anytime Brown touched the ball, an assumption the ball was going through the net would've been a good one. Kansas tried everything — man-to-man, zone, leaving Brown open and praying.

None of it worked.

"It was surprising how many open shots he got," Samir Doughty said. "He's one of the best shooters I've seen in my life honestly."

If you walk into Auburn Arena at any point in the day, there's a good chance you'll run into Brown.

It might be 6 a.m. It might be midnight.

Brown will probably be on the main floor or the practice court.

He'll likely be accompanied by his mom or dad, maybe a teammate, maybe some random friend whose proven himself an effective rebounder. As Bruce Pearl describes it, Brown "lives in the gym." There's nothing Brown loves more than standing in an empty gym taking a thousand shots until he decides it's time to give himself a break before his next session a few hours later.

To hear his teammates talk about Brown's work ethic explains how an uncontainable shooting outing like the one against Kansas is possible.

"All that gym work is paying off," Malik Dunbar said. "All those late nights with his mom and his dad. It's paying off right now."

"His work ethic is crazy," Austin Wiley added. "He deserves it."

"We know he's taken the time to perfect that craft, to perfect that shot," Anfernee McLemore said. "He has the free will to shoot it and most of the time we will. He's a microwave."

Nobody in Auburn's locker room is surprised — except when he misses.

Hard work paid off. Hard work carried Auburn to a comfortable victory over one of the most storied programs in college basketball history. Hard work is the epitome of Bryce Brown and his unstoppable jump shot.

“He lives in the gym. He lives in the gym. He does. He’s got a great routine. He’s taking great care of his body physically. If he can see it, he can make it. He’s hard on himself. He’s a self-made guy," Pearl said. "If he’s open, he can shoot it. If he has a good look, it's going in."