Chris Moore tried to hide the pain.

Auburn’s bulldog of a forward has been dealing with a shoulder injury on and off this season, and he tweaked it again during the Tigers’ opening-round NCAA Tournament win against Iowa on Thursday night in Birmingham. Moore tried to play through the pain, but after corralling a no-look pass from Wendell Green Jr. under the basket with a little more than 5 minutes to go until halftime.

It was then that the pain became too much. Moore winced and grabbed his shoulder, prompting one of the referees to stop the game for an injury timeout in order for Auburn to sub in Jaylin Williams at the four.

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“I was just battling the whole game,” Moore said. “I tried my best not to show it, but when I caught that pass, it was kind of probably the point where I had to sit down and get it looked at before I continued playing.”

Moore immediately went back to Auburn’s locker room to get his shoulder checked out. He didn’t return to Auburn’s bench until a few minutes into the second half, when he emerged from the locker room with a short-sleeved compression shirt on under his jersey.

Though he rejoined his team on the sideline, Moore didn’t see the floor in the second half of the Tigers’ 83-75 win against the Hawkeyes. Auburn managed fine without him, as starting power forward Jaylin Williams overcame some early foul trouble to finish with 11 points on 5-of-9 shooting. Freshman Yohan Traore also entered the rotation at the four, logging nine minutes and at times guarding All-Big Ten forward Kris Murray. Allen Flanigan also saw a couple rotations at the four, with walk-on Lior Berman on the wing.

“It was tough for me, because I’ve been battling injuries a lot this season,” Moore said. “…It was just something that our coach definitely put an emphasis on, that we got to have every guy (healthy). So, he sat me out. I wasn’t mad. My team was playing good; everybody was playing good, so when that happens then I can’t be mad at nothing. We got a good dub tonight.”

Though the injury sidelined Moore for the final 25 minutes of the opening-round matchup, after the game he described the injury as merely “a little tweak.” It at least didn’t seem as bad as when he first injured the shoulder on Jan. 10 at Ole Miss, which resulted in him missing two weeks of action before returning off the bench for Auburn.

The 6-foot-6 forward has been the epitome of toughness for Auburn this season, but he has also endured plenty. Along with the initial shoulder injury that sidelined him for two weeks, Moore busted his chin in the SEC Tournament a week ago against Arkansas. He took a hard fall face-first onto the court at Bridgestone Arena, drawing blood and requiring him to get stitches.

Even after he returned to the court against the Razorbacks, he had to switch jerseys from his usual No. 5 to the nameless No. 41—Auburn’s contingency jersey that it breaks out in the event a player gets blood on his typical uniform. That was the case for Moore in the SEC Tournament, even as he logged just nine minutes off the bench.

Bruce Pearl afterward described Moore’s grit as the embodiment of Auburn basketball. That toughness was on display again Thursday night after the Tigers’ opening-round win, when Moore appeared resolute in his belief that the reaggravation of his right shoulder wouldn’t prevent him from playing in Auburn’s second-round matchup against top-seeded Houston on Saturday (6:10 p.m. CT on TBS).

“There’s no way I’m going to show everybody that I’m weak and I ain’t got no fight in me,” Moore said. “I’m going to show everybody I got fight; no injury could put me down.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.