Kyle Guy, tormentor of Auburn, has been watching the Tigers’ run to the Final Four from afar. He likes the players, admires the coaching. “They’re writing their own little story right now,” he was saying this week. “They’ll always have a fan in me. I hope they do well.”
Oh, yeah. Now he does.
Come Saturday, the school will play in only its second Final Four in history. Which probably means anyone with a drop of Auburn blood will pause to remember how the first one ended six years ago. The night Kyle Guy methodically shoved a stake through their hearts, one free throw at a time.
The record will show that when time expired in the first national semifinal in Minneapolis’ U.S. Bank Stadium in 2019 — Guy having missed a last chance from the corner — the scoreboard showed Auburn beating Virginia 62-60. In the Tigers fan section, the party had already started. Title game, baby.
Wait a second. The officials were conferring. One had called a foul on Auburn’s Samir Doughty for bumping Guy on the shot. The final score up there on the board was suddenly not the final score. It was ruled that 0.6 seconds were left, and Guy, who had not shot a free throw the entire game, would have to stand at the line with what had to feel like half the planet watching and decide if his Cavaliers were to win or lose, or at least go overtime.
In Auburn, they have tried to forget what happened next. Swish. Swish. Timeout to ice the apparently un-iceable Guy. Swish. Make that final Virginia 63, Auburn 62. Two nights later, the Cavaliers were national champions.
Now it is 2025 and the Tigers are hoping fate is kinder to them this Final Four. Nearly 1,500 miles away from the Alamodome, the young man who did them in still hears about the most dramatic moment in his sports life. Guy has been working in the athletic department at the University of Virginia.
“I feel like every time I meet somebody new and it’s in the world of sports, they ask me what I was thinking at the free throw line,” he said.
He hasn’t changed his answer in six years.
“It’s the same. I literally tried to put the pressure on myself. I remember when I shot and got fouled, I put my face into my jersey, and I think people thought that I thought we had lost. But really I was thinking I need to get my mind right immediately. I was a little upset because I thought I was going to make the shot.
Kyle Guy (5) attempts his free throws as players and fans look on in the Ƶ Men's Final Four at US Bank Stadium on April 6, 2019.
“When I stepped to the line, I was like, all right, there’s 80,000 people here, there’s 10 million watching on TV. This is like backyard basketball stuff you have dreamed of your whole life. Why not take advantage of that? I made my first two. They called timeout and I looked at my dad up in the stands and he gave me a little juice. I walked away from the huddle, so I had no idea what our defensive game plan was if I were to miss or make it. I tried to own the pressure, that fear of what if I miss? What if I make it was my thought process. I think immediately after the game I told a reporter that I was terrified, but in a good way because it was making you feel alive.”
The worst night of Guy’s college career might have helped him face the heat. The season before, Virginia had made agonizing history by becoming the first No. 1 seed to lose in the first round to a No. 16, shockingly blown away by 20 points by UMBC.
“That’s probably the only game in my life that I cracked under pressure,” he said. “I’ve only rewatched it once. I didn’t even know we were tied at halftime (21-21). I thought we were down 10. I knew from an early moment in that game that something was wrong, and we weren’t ourselves.”
Guy figures the infamy helped harden him and his teammates for the run in 2019. When they were down six points at halftime to No. 16 seed Gardner-Webb and deja vu was pounding at the door, Guy remembered everyone in the locker room vowing that "this is not going to happen again. We kind of flipped it from what if we lose to what if we win?”
So he was ready to switch to crisis control mode at the free throw line, while every citizen of Auburn world pleaded for him to miss.
He has never watched that game in its entirety nor any of the games in the Cavaliers’ championship run and the remarkable string of narrow escapes. Four points over Oregon, overtime to get past Purdue, then Auburn, and finally overtime to beat Texas Tech in the title game. Guy averaged more than 18 points in those four wins, and shot 12 free throws. He missed one. “I want to save that to where my kids are old enough to understand, and we can watch it together.”
His two sons have some growing to do before that. But Guy knows those three free throws changed his life. “A hundred percent. One, it was a chance for me to cultivate facing your fears and being able to step up in the big moments. And then I only had three goals when I committed to Virginia. It was win the national championship, get drafted and get my jersey retired. I hope the third thing will come to fruition soon. Being able to set a goal and check it off the list is always an important thing, I know I gained 100,000 followers overnight after that so I guess I became a little more famous, but that really doesn’t matter to me. It was more those moments, including UMBC, helped shape me into who I am today.”
He got a sampling of the Auburn reaction online after the game. “They were all complaining about a double-dribble by Ty Jerome. But they weren’t talking about Samir Doughty traveling that they didn’t call before that, so I don’t really play that game of they didn’t call this, they didn’t call that.
Kyle Guy (left) and Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl (right) shake hands following the Final Four matchup on April 6, 2019.
“I do remember a nice video of all the Auburn fans celebrating because they didn’t know there was a foul called.”
Chance would later have him intersect with Tigers off that team. He played in the same professional league with Jared Harper, who had 11 points that night “I don’t think we’re best friends but we’re cool. We always say what’s up and see how things are going in person,” Guy said. “Bryce Brown was on my summer league team that year. I didn’t talk to him a whole lot and I don’t think he wanted to talk to me that much.
“I don’t anticipate us being best friends, but I have a lot of respect for those guys.”
And the current Tigers headed for San Antonio? “I think they have a really freaking good team this year and Bruce Pearl is a hell of a coach. They kind of check all the boxes. But also does Florida. I would venture all four teams check most boxes.”
Guy filled a bracket before the tournament. He has Florida winning the championship and beating Auburn in the Final Four.
No doubt he’s hearing a lot about 2019 this week, but his own personal moment of truth 15 feet from the basket is not what lingers for him. “It’s not so much the free throws that come back to me randomly. It’s more the celebration when we won the title and watching One Shining Moment,” he said. “Now that I live here, I see Tony Bennett almost weekly. That’s the stuff that comes to my mind. The free throws were awesome, I can’t even fully put it into words, it’s still surreal, it doesn’t feel real that it happened. I mean, it’s straight out of a movie.”
A horror film, from Auburn’s perspective.
So the Tigers are back in a Final Four, while things have changed at Virginia. There’s a new coach, Ryan Odom. The same Ryan Odom whose UMBC shocked Guy and the Cavaliers in 2018. “The world is smaller than we think,” Guy said. "I think it’s a good hire.”
And he’ll be watching Auburn in the Final Four on television Saturday, not standing at the line ready to break every Tiger heart. Ask Guy if he’ll be cheering for anyone, and his answer is that of a Virginia man.
“I just know I’m not rooting for Duke.”
