AUBURN — With just a little more than seven minutes to play, Auburn's chances looked bleak.

Someone needed to make a play. Leave it to the receiver-turned-cornerback to step up.

Sophomore cornerback Noah Igbinoghene sniffed the play out from the jump. Texas A&M, somewhat surprisingly, stuck with the passing game despite the 10-point lead with less than eight minutes to play. On third down, Kellen Mond tried to find a wide receiver just past the first-down line along the sideline.

Instead, he found Igbinoghene.

"I knew the game turned around instantly once I caught it because I looked at the sidelines and everybody was hyped," Igbinoghene said. "I just saw the guy in the periphery of my eye. I kind of baited the quarterback a little bit into throwing it and he threw it. I didn’t think he was going to throw it at first because I was standing right there, but he threw it and I caught it. ... Just to make a play for my team, I know we needed it, we really needed it at the end of the game."

Jeremiah Dinson referred to it as the "spark" the entire team needed. Daniel Thomas said how proud he was of Igbinoghene for making a play. Deshuan Davis, Dontavius Russell and Derrick Brown used various adjectives — "big," "huge," "much-needed," etc. — to describe the importance of that specific moment to the eventual 28-24 comeback win.

Gus Malzahn took it a step further.

"I think Noah’s interception was really the play of the game," Malzahn said. "That one play kind of got the crowd back into it too, you know? That interception was really something. You're able to make an explosive play like that, and the rest of it is history, you know? The momentum was all on our side. The crowd was going bananas and it really inspired our defense, inspired our offense."

On an otherwise hit-or-miss defensive performance, especially against the run, the turning-point interception piggy-backed off a big stop made nearly two minutes earlier. Auburn forced Texas A&M to kick a field goal — that would've stretched the lead to 13 points — early in the fourth quarter. It missed, which left the door open for the comeback.

The defensive mentality began there.

After Auburn made it 24-21 post-Igbinoghene pick, the Tigers' defense could sense what would soon happen. They knew they just needed to do their part — and momentum was on their side.

"With the way the game was and being able to keep them out of the red zone, keep them out of the end zone, we had to make those plays," Brown said. "That’s something that we just pride ourselves on being able to do when our backs are against the wall."

Once Auburn's offense held up its end, taking the four-point lead, the Tigers defense found its comfort zone. With the Jordan-Hare Stadium crowd rocking — Davis called it a top-3 loudest crowd in his career — Auburn fed off the energy to close out the win by chasing Mond around the backfield.

Anytime Auburn's defense needed a play or a stop, it got it.

"It's all about fight, man. It goes back to that logo and the things that were instilled in that logo before we even got here. Back to the days before we were even born," Davis said. "Auburn is built on toughness and is built on fight. I can tell you, my team showed a lot of fight tonight. We showed a lot of grit. We showed some will not to quit, and we found a win to win this game."