Wendell Green Jr. felt something weighing him down as he emerged from the Dead Sea.

It was a strange sensation, going from the buoyancy of the famously dense body of water that straddles the border between Israel and Jordan, to being feeling the weight shift in the pocket of his swim trunks. It took a moment for Green to register what was causing this shift of weight, then it dawned on him.

He left his iPhone in his pocket. Panic set in. The phone was waterlogged.

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Green resigned himself to defeat in the moment. He would be phoneless for the rest of Auburn’s August trip to Israel, when the team played three exhibition games against international competition, but he maintained an optimism about his phone’s status. A few days later, after having time to air out, it was working again.

Resilient, the phone has been — and has needed to be. Green’s iPhone has been through some tribulations this year. Just a week or so ago, he left it in his pocket again when he was in the whirlpool. It led to him learning on delay that he earned second-team All-SEC honors; teammate Jaylin Williams delivered the news to him when he arrived at Neville Arena for practice that afternoon.

“It’s just a bad habit,” Green said. “I don’t know why I keep doing that. I did it when I was younger too, so hopefully I can just get past that.”

While Green has yet to learn his lesson on that front, there he was on Wednesday morning, sitting in front of his locker at Legacy Arena and chatting with reporters ahead of Auburn’s first-round game against Iowa in the NCAA Tournament. His phone lied face-down on the cushion between his legs. It was working again, a promising sign for Auburn’s floor general — and perhaps a metaphor for the Tigers’ season.

Like Green’s phone, Auburn has been through its share of trials and tribulations this year.

“Yeah, we’ve had a lot of adversity,” senior guard Zep Jasper said. “For example, the SEC Tournament last week. We were down by 15 against Arkansas, and we climbed back. A lot of people didn’t believe we were going to come back. A lot of people believed we were going to get blown out. It’s part of the game. A lot of people doubt you, and I’m for that.”

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Even before that comeback against Arkansas, which went for naught in a close loss in Nashville, Tenn., a week ago, this Auburn team had endured plenty.

There was the preseason injury to four-star freshman Chance Westry that eventually led to him getting shut down for the season at the start of SEC play. There was the 31,000 miles worth of travel — between the Israel trip in the preseason to trips to Mexico, the West Coast, Texas and West Virginia — that resulted in some late-night returns home and that Bruce Pearl conceded may have worn on his team as the year went on. Then, of course, there were the narrow losses during a 20-12 campaign that saw the Tigers go from ranked to unranked, then to the brink of the bubble before ultimately punching their ticket to the Big Dance. Of Auburn’s dozen losses this season, nine were by single digits. Seven of those were by five points or fewer.

The Tigers have been one of the unluckiest teams in the country this season, according to KenPom, yet Pearl’s team has persisted. On the strength of a solid nonconference schedule and a late-season win against NET No. 4 Tennessee, Auburn earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

“I do think the team had to get up off the mat a lot this year,” Pearl said this week. “And yet we pretty much were able to — almost every time.”

Auburn has been counted out time and again this year. That’s bound to happen as the losses pile up and when last season — when the Tigers vaulted to No. 1 in the nation and earned a two-seed in the tournament — is used as a measuring stick for success. Green has also experienced his share of ridicule, albeit goodhearted fun from those within the locker room. That, too, is bound to happen when you have a track record of carelessness with a phone like Green does.

“From my perspective as a guy that does a lot of the operations and communicating, like yeah, I give him a hard time because it’s like, ‘How am I supposed to let you know when practice is or what you’re supposed to be doing or when you’re supposed to be there?’” Auburn assistant Mike Burgomaster said. “So yeah, we give him a little bit of a hard time, but yeah, as a point guard, right, you can’t turn your own phone over. He’s just got to clean that up a little bit.”

Williams and freshman point guard Tre Donaldson laughed and shook their heads when asked about Green’s harrowing history with his phone. K.D. Johnson seemed puzzled by the reoccurrence of the issue, and Green himself seemed unfazed by it; he refuses to get a waterproof case, confident that his phone will manage — even if he needs to keep reviving it.

“It’s getting through it,” Green said. “It’s getting through it.”

Kind of like this Auburn team. Every time the Tigers have been knocked down they’ve pulled themselves up. Even amid a 4-9 close to the season, they pulled out their biggest win when they needed it most, knocking off Tennessee at Neville Arena earlier this month.

“We just been staying the course, and through all the rough times, there’s a light at the end,” Johnson said.

Green’s phone is working again, for now at least. And with it, there’s a new sense of optimism for Auburn. The Tigers head into the NCAA Tournament as the No. 9 seed in the Midwest Region, with their first game Thursday evening against No. 8 seed Iowa. Tip is set for 5:50 p.m., and even though Auburn is the lower-seeded team, it gets the benefit of playing in its own backyard, drawing Birmingham and Legacy Arena as its opening-weekend site.

In a season full of tough breaks and close calls — both on the court and, in Green’s case, with his phone — Auburn has seemingly caught a break. Now it’s just a matter of whether the Tigers will make the most of it.

“We just keep bouncing back,” Green said. “Hopefully, it’s just the postseason — one game at a time. We’re only guaranteed one game. Hopefully we can just keep it going and go on a little run.”

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