General
If you go to an Auburn men’s basketball game, spend time around the athletics facilities or even take a walk downtown, it’s hard to go too long without seeing a certain charismatic smile, worn by a graduate student that many call the “ultimate Auburn man.”
Dylan Cardwell isn’t the guy who is going to fill up the stat sheet or even score many points on a given night in Neville Arena. In his fifth season at Auburn — the first in which he’s been a regular starter — Cardwell is averaging just 5.2 points and 4.9 rebounds per game but helps anchor an Auburn team that currently ranks No. 1 in the country.
Known as Auburn’s glue guy, Cardwell brings defense, rebounding, physicality and toughness to a team that allows his rather old-school style of playing center fit in seamlessly.
“No one wants to be Dennis Rodman,” Cardwell said while smiling in an interview with AL.com. “So, for me, I was like, ‘Man, Dennis Rodman’s a Hall of Famer, Draymond Green’s a Hall of Famer and man, why not pursue that path and just be the guy who does the dirty work?’”
If there’s anything Cardwell represents more than doing the dirty work, it’s winning. He’s tied with Jaylin Williams as the winningest player in Auburn men’s basketball history and has a chance to stand alone when the Tigers travel to Lexington Saturday for a marquee game against Kentucky.
Despite averaging 4.2 points per game over his five-year Auburn career, he’s undoubtedly become one of the faces of the most successful era in program history.
“I would just love for you to open up the dictionary or some book and look up the definition of Auburn basketball, and see Dylan Cardwell going like this,” Bruce Pearl said while raising his arms. “I think that would be OK.”
Not only does Cardwell have an ability to affect games without filling up the stat sheet, but it’ll be also hard to find someone having more fun doing it.
Throughout Cardwell’s time at Auburn, he’s been known for his passion, excitement and theatrics while on the court. Whether it’s him raising his arms and pumping up the crowd when he’s announced in the starting lineup or staring into the cameras after a blocked shot, he brings entertainment value on a nightly basis.
Cardwell said the outward emotion and theatrics started during his junior year of high school, taking inspiration from other passionate players such as Denver Nuggets guard Russell Westbrook and San Antonio Spurs guard Keldon Johnson.
“It helped me get going and help kind of break the nerves of the game,” Cardwell said. “I just like to give people a show, because if I’m in the stands, I want an experience where it feels like I too contribute to the game. And I feel like what fans kind of get with me.”
Cardwell’s involvement with the fans and Auburn community goes further than just his expressive nature on the court.
He’s acted as somewhat of an ambassador for the program over the course of his five years on the Plains, constantly representing the team at events around campus and always showing his face in the community.
One day he might be putting on pads and a helmet to run through drills at the Woltosz Performance Center, and others you might find him going through training with Auburn PD or nursing birds back to health at the Auburn Raptor Center.
All of these activities are part of a series Cardwell has on Auburn men’s basketball’s social media pages titled, “Chillin’ with Dylan”. Cardwell said his presence on social media really got started during his junior season at Auburn, starring in a video where he interacted with students who were camping out for Auburn’s game against Alabama.
That eventually evolved into Cardwell’s own series where he’d do various activities around campus and in the community.
“The Lord just gave this opportunity to have this kind of platform where it’s like hey, just have fun and get to experience stuff that, like I said, another college kid isn’t doing,” Cardwell said. “Another college kid isn’t probably putting on some football pads, being a firefighter for a day, being a police officer for a day, taking care of the eagle, Independence and Aurea, at the facilities, and watch them fly around and practice for the eagle flight, like I’ve just done so much.”
Going into college, Cardwell wanted to make the most of his experience both on and off the court. As someone who was so laser-focused on his craft in high school that he never went to Homecoming or Prom, Cardwell made it a point to enjoy everything the college experience had to offer at Auburn.
Becoming the big man on campus in both a literal and figurative sense is something he says was inspired by a recruiting visit he took to Tennessee while still in high school.
His host on the visit was then Tennessee star and now Charlotte Hornets forward Grant Williams, who was not just the star of the team, but arguably the most recognizable face on campus at the time.
“Everybody knew who he was, and he treated everybody like a real human being,” Cardwell said. “He was friends with every single team, every single person on campus from what it looked like, he always gave people the time of day to talk to him, and he was never unreachable. And that’s when I was kind of like, ‘Wow, I want to be like Grant Williams when I grow up.’ And that was kind of the blueprint the Lord set in front of me as a junior in high school and I kind of did that plus more and I’ve had the ultimate college experience.”
That visit was also a big reason why Cardwell was leaning toward signing with the Vols throughout most of his recruitment. Auburn didn’t even offer him until April of his senior year of high school, and if it weren’t for then Tennessee assistant Rob Lanier leaving to become the head coach at SMU, Cardwell might have spent his college years wearing a different shade of orange.
At the time, Auburn was pursuing now Alabama center Clifford Omoruyi, but he chose Rutgers out of high school, leading to the Tigers extending an offer to Cardwell shortly after.
Once Auburn began pursuing Cardwell — a recruiting effort led by former assistant Wes Flanigan — the former three-star prospect felt at home on the Plains, growing up rooting for Auburn football.
While the attention might not have been placed on Cardwell early in his recruitment, Pearl’s glad he made the effort to get the 6-foot-11 center on his team now. He was asked after Auburn’s 106-76 home win over Ole Miss what Cardwell has meant to the program, and the head coach gave a three-minute glowing response detailing who he is both as a player and person.
Pearl said they signed Cardwell despite not playing his senior year of high school due to being ineligible, “because we saw a young man that wanted to work hard, that had been overlooked. But he had that size, he had some speed, he had some ability. He kept on chopping wood. He kept on working at his game.”
From there, Cardwell was a contributor right away, and has stuck with the program through multiple different groups of players and tough competition for playing time in the frontcourt.
“So many other players would have left,” Pearl said. “Walker Kessler is coming in? I’m outta here. Johni Broome is coming in? I’m outta here. He stayed, and he was willing to come off the bench.”
That was until Cardwell’s fifth and final season at Auburn.
As his fourth year with the program wound down, Cardwell said he already had it in his mind that it would be his last, looking for an opportunity to play professionally. After an early exit in the NCAA Tournament, Cardwell wasn’t satisfied with the NBA attention he was getting, choosing not to put his name into the draft.
With All-American center Johni Broome coming back, though, there were questions as to whether it was worth it to return to Auburn as playing time could still be hard to come by. But Pearl wasn’t going to give up.
“I promised him if they both come back, I’ll start you together. And we’ll play you together,” Pearl said. “We worked on it all summer long. And it was not working at all. At all. Those guys, to their credit, absolutely made it work.”
Not only have Broome and Cardwell made it work starting and playing together, they’ve helped lead Auburn to its best season in school history, sitting one win away from clinching the Southeastern Conference with three games to play.
The two are also close friends, something that wasn’t always true when Broome first arrived and was Cardwell’s main competition for playing time. That friendship made getting Cardwell’s name into the record books mean even more for Broome and the rest of the team.
“We knew he was very close to it, but we obviously were going to have to have a great year. We were like, yeah, let’s make sure he gets that,” Broome said after Cardwell tied the record with a win over Ole Miss. “He’s a perfect Auburn man. Everybody can look at him as somebody who loves Auburn.”
Pearl described Cardwell’s time at Auburn as story of a player who chose to “fight, not flee.”
In the age of the transfer portal, it’s increasingly uncommon to see a player spend their entire career at one school, and rare to see that loyal career last five seasons.
That’s the case for Cardwell, and the player known by those around the program as the “ultimate Auburn man,” is a game away from standing alone in the record books.
Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m
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