KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was halftime now inside the Auburn locker room Sunday when assistant coach Steven Pearl, the son of Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, delivered a message that lifted the Tigers as high as a team can possibly be lifted.

“Chuma’s on his way,” the younger Pearl said, interrupting his father. “Let’s play for Chuma.

“Just to give them that courage and that bravery knowing that their brother who had suffered such a nasty injury and was coming to support them, and through the pain that he’s going through right now, wanted to be here for his teammates.”

Chuma Okeke, their fallen brother, his Final Four hopes and dreams dashed by a torn ACL he had suffered Friday night against North Carolina, was on his way to try to inspire his teammates to make history and advance to the school’s first Final Four every bit as much as they were on a mission to get him there, somehow, some way, against bigger, stronger Kentucky.

The Auburn players were immediately filled with courage and bravery.

“Their eyes all got big,” Steven Pearl said, “and they kind of realized like what was at stake — knowing that Chuma would do anything to be here right now and obviously can’t, but through all the pain he was going to show up anyway to support his teammates, support his brothers.

“And I think everybody got new life out of that.”

Okeke had been in too much pain at the start of the game to leave the hotel.

“He has to be watching in the first half at the hotel and said, ‘I can’t stay here. I got to go,’ ” Bruce Pearl said.

It had been Kentucky 35, Auburn 30 at halftime when a roar erupted during a timeout early in the second half.

“Hey,” Steven Pearl said, “5 just rolled in.”

Okeke, arguably the team’s best player, was suddenly sitting in a wheelchair behind the Auburn bench, his left leg elevated.

Bryce Brown had spent a couple of empty, lonely days without his roommate, and when he saw Okeke for the first time during a media timeout, he told him: “We got you. We’re gonna do this for you.”

Okeke replied: “All right, B.”

And so first Brown began drilling 3s and killing Kentucky with pull-up jumpers, and then backcourt mate Jared Harper took over in overtime, and Auburn, much more than a bunch of chuck-and-duckers, simply refused to lose. They played as if their lives depended on it. Every time Kentucky punched, Auburn punched back. And after the Kentucky players had trudged off the court, Auburn wheeled Okeke onto the floor, below the podium where his euphoric teammates were dancing.

“Chuma, Chuma,” they chanted.

Then someone handed him the trophy and Okeke, wearing a White Final Four cap backwards, was smiling. He took some of the paper confetti that was falling on him and flung it in the air.

Asked what it meant to him, Okeke said: “It means a lot.”

They wheeled him to the basket in his University of Kansas Hospital wheelchair so he could look up and watch teammate after teammate climb a ladder that he could not and cut strands of the net.

Someone leaned down to ask him: How hard is this? And Okeke said: “No, it’s not hard at all.”

He had told his teammates in the morning that he was in too much pain to come to the game.

“That goes to show how great of a teammate he is for him to show up, knowing how much pain he was in,” Samir Doughty said, who had locked up Kentucky sharpshooter Tyler Herro.

And when they wheeled Okeke off the court to the locker room, he was wearing a large strand of the net as a necklace.

Pearl had led a chant of “SEC, SEC, SEC,” on the podium. He also looked down at Okeke and told him: “This one is for you. The next two are for Auburn.”

The next one will be against Virginia. Okeke will have surgery on Tuesday, performed by Dr. James Andrews. He will have five days to make it to Minneapolis. And when he does, these history/making Auburn Tigers underdogs will be thrilled to see him. And vice versa.