A nervous energy began to set in at Neville Arena.

A 10-point Auburn lead that had the crowd buzzing after a thunderous dunk by Allen Flanigan had quickly evaporated. The Tigers were now trailing on their home floor following 13 unanswered points by Ole Miss, one of the worst teams in the SEC this season.

Then Johni Broome steadied the ship.

Auburn’s big man came up huge in a game that almost got away from the Tigers on Wednesday night, making big play after big play on both ends of the court during the second half of Auburn’s 78-74 win against Ole Miss.

After Ole Miss’ 13-0 run erased that double-digit Auburn lead and had the Tigers flirting with disaster, Broome made his presence felt — and all but assured his team wouldn’t drop another one of its must-win games. Broome blocked five shots down the stretch while finishing with six on the night. The first of those saw Broome stop the bleeding on the other end, earning a trip to the free-throw line for a pair of makes that snapped the Rebels’ run. His second of those blocks came a couple possessions later, which allowed Auburn to again cut the deficit to one. Then, inside the final six minute, he blocked another shot at the rim, this time setting up a possession that ended with him corralling an offensive rebound and finding Wendell Green Jr. open under the basket for an easy layup that put Auburn up by one with 5:30 to play.

That layup sparked an 11-1 run by Auburn, which saw Broome come up with another stop at the rim and contribute four points during that stretch, with Green accounting for the other seven.

Broome put his final touches on the night with 56.3 seconds to go, when he blocked yet another Ole Miss layup to preserve a five-point lead in the final minute. It was Broome’s sixth block of the night, with all of them coming in the second half.

The Tigers needed every one of them to stave off a pesky Rebels team and bounce back from Saturday’s last-second loss at Vanderbilt. Despite Broome’s commanding performance on both ends down the stretch, Ole Miss refused to go quietly into the night.

Even after his last blocked shot, the Rebels hung around. James White drilled a 3-pointer with 14 seconds to play to cut Auburn’s lead to one on a possession that saw Ole Miss grab a pair of offensive boards, but the Tigers held on at the free-throw line and secured the win.

While Broome loomed large over the game’s final 10 minutes and finished with 19 points, six blocks and eight rebounds (five of which came in the game’s final six minutes), he wasn’t alone in helping Auburn get back on track. The Tigers had four players finish in double figures, led by Green, who finished with a game-high 23 points—including 13 in the second half while icing the game at the free-throw line with four makes in the waning seconds.

Green was 6-of-12 from the field, with much of his damage done at the rim, as he was relentless in pushing the ball upcourt and attacking the Rebels in transition. After an early coast-to-coast layup right in front of the Ole Miss bench in the first half, Green forced Rebels coach Kermit Davis to burn a timeout less than seven minutes into the game. Davis was livid, and the timeout didn’t do much good; Auburn scored the next five points after the timeout, and Davis burned another one 61 seconds later.

Green added four assists and a pair of steals to his line. Jaylin Williams finished with 12 points and three rebounds, while Flanigan added 11 points—including his two thunderous slams—to go with six rebounds and five assists.

It was the sort of late-game performance Auburn has been lacking of late, as the Tigers now head into a brutal three-game stretch to close the season: Saturday’s trip to Kentucky before traveling to Alabama for a midweek matchup with the rival Tide and then closing out the regular season back at Neville Arena against Tennessee next Saturday.

AL.com will update this post.

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