NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A media scrum formed around Jared Harper as he entered the Auburn locker room.

Harper's own teammates, however, may have asked the most telling question.

"You need some ice for your back, Jared?" Malik Dunbar joked.

"Yeah, you need ice for your back, Jared?" Samir Doughty chimed in, as well.

"I know your back's hurting," Dunbar replied.

Harper paused in the middle of answering a question about Chuma Okeke to chuckle and shake his head at Doughty and Dunbar. Then he returned to talking about Okeke and the ferocious alley-oop — one of Harper's six assists — that helped ice Auburn's 73-64 victory over South Carolina to move onto the SEC Tournament semifinals against Florida.

To be sure, Harper was asked officially: Do you need ice for that back?

"Yeah I do," Harper said with a laugh.

Jared Harper carried Auburn to victory on Friday afternoon.

The Auburn point guard didn't have a bad game in the SEC Tournament opener, but it was one of his least productive scoring outings. He finished with five points. His second-round performance couldn't have been more different.

Harper scored 27 points. That was a team-high. He assisted six other buckets. That, too, was a team-best. Harper also corralled six rebounds, which — you guessed it — led Auburn against South Carolina.

There wasn't anything Harper couldn't do.

"He's able to do everything, pretty much. I know he kind of makes it look easy when it's late in the game, three minutes left, a lot of pressure on the line," Bryce Brown said. "When you have a guard that's just able to get past the man at will, like easy, that's not real easy. He makes it look easy. He gets to the free-throw line, knocks the free throws down. That comes from being experienced, his work ethic. He's in the gym every day working at it. That's why he's such a great player."

When Auburn needed it most, that's when Harper was his most electric.

Tied at halftime, Harper proved to be the difference-maker in the second half.

He scored 19 of his 27 points after the halftime break. Most astonishingly, Harper had 14 free-throw attempts in the second half. He made 12. Everyone else on the court — on Auburn and South Carolina — only took seven second-half free throws.

Much of that success began with Harper's defensive rebounds. He gathered five of his six boards after halftime. On three of those rebounds, Harper had it in his mind during the board he was going to go coast-to-coast.

He finished in traffic. He felt contact and got the charity stripe.

And, as Brown said previously, he made it look easy.

"I just continued to be in attack mode, grabbing rebounds, getting out in transition. I just know if I needed to get to the basket. I did a good job of that tonight," Harper said. "Coming into the game, coach wanted us to push the break on whether it's a made basket or missed basket. We're a better team when we're outrunning the transition. We were able to do that tonight."