With 4:44 left and No. 2 Auburn up 17 points over Texas, it seemed that the Tigers were heading toward another blowout victory in a season filled with them.

The Longhorns didn't give up, though, cutting the lead to three twice with less than a minute to go. Many teams might have lost their cool after blowing such a big lead, but not these Tigers. In fact, Johni Broome considered it a benefit for him and his teammates.

"It was actually good for us," he said. "Nobody in the huddle was panicked. We needed a close ball game. We needed some adversity to see how we could play with it on the road. We handled it pretty well. We had one costly turnover at the end. But, other than that, we handled it pretty well."

Two free throws by Denver Jones extended Auburn's lead to five with 17 seconds left. After a pair of free throws by Texas, Tahaad Pettiford stepped to the line and iced the game with a pair at the charity stripe with six seconds to go.

"Coach preaches about it all the time, about free throws and how crucial that is," Broome said. "For us to go 21 of 25 and only miss four free throws, it just shows how we were locked in today. We made a lot of them down the stretch when we needed them the most. You need to make free throws on the road, especially to win in the SEC."

It turned into an 87-82 victory for Auburn in Austin, a well-deserved win on the road in a conference that won't see many of those.

"We made some mistakes," Bruce Pearl said. "Some of them were forced; we'll learn from them. But road wins against the better teams in our league are going to be few. There aren't going to be many, and we got one tonight."