The pair of charter busses pulled up to the front entrance of Auburn’s Neville Arena at 10:12 a.m. Tuesday.

And there the chariots waited for more than an hour and half — idling, filling the air with a low “hum” sound and the smell of diesel exhaust.

Inside the arena, the busses’ future passengers were hard at work. They worked right up until it was near time to depart, leaving them with only a few minutes to freshen up and check that they’d packed everything they needed one last time.

Meanwhile, just outside the doors of Neville Arena’s Scholarship entrance, a crowd was forming.

Auburn softball coach Mickey Dean stopped by — as did Auburn students, faculty members and boosters.

Even Toby – a Spaniel whose docked tail wagged the entire time – patiently waited, unfazed by the countless sounds coming from laughing fans and the busses’ engines, which continued to hum as afternoon approached.

Boarding was scheduled for 11:30 a.m, but the passengers were running late — 13 minutes late, to be exact.

Yet no one seemed to mind.

Everyone outside was willing to wait as long as needed as they gathered to send off Auburn’s NCAA Tournament-bound women’s basketball team, which had learned it’d made the big dance for the first time since 2019 two days prior.

When the team finally emerged from the doors, suitcases in one hand and pre-packed meals from Chick-Fil-A in the other, they were greeted by the “swishing” sounds of orange shakers, a “woo” here and a “woo” there, and, of course, a fair share of “War Eagles.”

“Go get ‘em,” one fan told Auburn head coach Johnnie Harris with a high-five. “Get ‘em.”

And that resonated with Harris, who had met with the media less than an hour beforehand to preview Auburn’s trip to Storrs, Connecticut, where they’d play an NCAA Tournament game for the first time since 2019.

“We gotta stand on business,” Harris said. “We gotta go in there and embrace this opportunity. It’s a great opportunity. We just need to go in there and play one game at a time.”

Game 1 for the Harris and the Tigers, a play-in game against Arizona, has been viewed as questionable – to some, even insulting.

“They had a few mixed emotions about being in the play-in game,” Harris said of her team.

For the sake of comparison, while Auburn (20-11, 8-8 SEC) was hit with a play-in bid, Texas A&M (19-12, 6-10 SEC) drew an uncontested 11-seed and will play its first game in the opening round of the tournament instead of one of the “First Four” games.

But Harris hasn’t been afraid to lean into her team’s thoughts on being gypped.

“My message to them is embrace this opportunity and go out there and like I said, stand on your business. Take care of business,” Harris said. “So if you feel like you shouldn’t have been there, go in there and take care of business.”

Arizona squeaked its way into the tournament after posting a 17-15 record to this point, including an 8-10 record in Pac-12 play.

In a double-edged-sword situation, the Wildcats are familiar to the Tigers. Not because the two teams have met this season – because they haven’t – but rather because it’s like looking into the mirror, Harris says.

“They’re almost like a twin team to us. They play pretty much the same style. They like to press a lot. They’ll throw some junk at you. They like to get up the floor and score quick,” Harris said of Arizona. “Just looking at them, it’s eerie because we play the same way.”

That said, while the bookies in Vegas are expecting a close contest between the like teams, Arizona is favored and is expected to eliminate Auburn.

“We were not picked to advance. So that’s a little bit extra motivation, you know, go in there with a chip on your shoulder and play,” Harris said. “We play with the best of the best. So we go in there and take care of our business and everybody do their job, I feel like we’ll have an opportunity.”

But regardless of what happens at Thursday at 6 p.m. in Storrs, Conn., making its first NCAA Tournament appearance in Year 3 of Harris’ tenure is a big step in the right direction for an Auburn program that was stuck in the mud prior to her arrival.

Not to mention, it’s quite the feat for Harris, who had never been a head coach before arriving to The Plains.

“I don’t think I have yet,” Harris said when asked if she’d let the reality of her making her first NCAA Tournament as a head coach sink in. “One of my coaches said, ‘Coach, this is where you said we’d be at this time.’ That was probably the first time I really sat back and thought about it.”

When Harris was introduced as Auburn’s head women’s basketball coach on April 5, 2021, she said she “saw potential in the program” and she believed “what we’re going to do here will be special.”

And one of the biggest steps she and the program could make was stepping into their dancing shoes and returning to the NCAA Tournament.

“I came in here because I felt like we could get back here,” Harris said Tuesday. “I came here because I felt like this was a place we could build and get back to those years when Auburn was winning. And this is where Auburn should be. And it should be up from here.”

And that’s why the folks – and Toby the dog – stuck around for as long as they did Tuesday morning.

They weren’t hearing the obnoxious hum of the busses’ engines or noticing the smell of the diesel fumes in the air.

Instead, they were hearing the sounds of promises kept and smelling the great opportunity that comes with a March Madness appearance.