Bryce Brown sat down in front of his locker inside Sprint Center on Friday night and clapped his hands together.

“Us against the world,” Brown said. “Why not us? That’s the motto: Why not us?”

Auburn’s senior shooting guard then lowered and shook his head, reflecting on the night that was. A 17-point win against top-seeded North Carolina to advance to the Elite Eight for the second time in school history. A game in which the Tigers lost their best player, Chuma Okeke, to a torn ACL. An 11th straight win to take the program to the precipice of greatness.

“Why not us,” Malik Dunbar chimed in from his seat at the neighboring stall. “It’s got to be somebody; why not us, man? That’s how it be, though. They always hated on the ones who came out on top. We really the rose out the concrete…. We’ll take the underdog role. We’re the rose in the concrete.”

Why not us? It has become the mantra in Auburn’s locker room amid the team’s historic and unlikely run through the NCAA Tournament.

It’s a great question for a program lacking in the type of tradition expected of teams that make it this far. This impromptu motto was coined by the team last week in Salt Lake City ahead of its second-round matchup with Kansas — a game in which the Tigers were favored but felt like underdogs in the public eye, going up against the third-winningest program in college basketball history and a true blueblood of the sport.

After the Tigers dismissed the Jayhawks with ease, that rallying cry grew louder in advance of the Sweet 16, where Auburn faced another traditional powerhouse, top-seeded North Carolina. The Tar Heels, too, were eliminated in convincing fashion.

The back-to-back wins against bluebloods didn’t surprise Auburn, a team with undeniable confidence at this juncture. Losing was never an option in their minds, but the fashion in which the Tigers dispatched Kansas and UNC wasn’t exactly expected, according to McLemore.

“At this point we beat one of the best teams in college basketball this year, so why can’t we play Kentucky and win and go to the Final Four and then beat those teams in the Final Four as well?” McLemore said. “We lace our shoes up just like they lace their shoes up, so why can’t we be the one to come out on top? That’s where that came from.”

Auburn has never shied away from playing up the disrespect factor under coach Bruce Pearl, who has often used perceived slights as motivational tools for his team. The Tigers certainly felt that way on Selection Sunday, when they received a five-seed in the toughest region of the tournament despite being a top-25 team, No. 18 in NET ranking, one of the hottest teams entering the postseason and winning the SEC Tournament championship.

How were they rewarded? With a gauntlet that included the top-three teams in all-time wins: Kansas, UNC and Kentucky, the latter of which the Tigers will face Sunday at 1:20 p.m. CT in the Elite Eight.

“That’s ridiculous,” McLemore said of the team’s NCAA Tournament draw. “We thought we would be able to be in a better seeding because we won the SEC championship, so we kind of took that as, you know, we’re just accepting the underdog role again and we’re going to do our best to kind of come out on top of it. I feel like up to this point we’ve done well.

“I feel like some teams may have underestimated our firepower as far as running and offensive efficiency, but I just feel like up to this point, why can’t we beat Kentucky too? We already beat UNC and Kansas; Kentucky’s just the next step to solidifying our legacy at Auburn basketball.”

Auburn will be an underdog again Sunday. Kentucky opened as a 2.5-point favorite, and the Tigers will be without Okeke, who will remain with the team in Kansas City before undergoing surgery Tuesday. The crowd inside Sprint Center will be decidedly Kentucky blue.

“I definitely feel like we have a shot,” center Austin Wiley said. “Of course, it’s nothing new. Everybody’s going to doubt us. It’s been like that the whole tournament… the whole season. It’s nothing new, really.”

The Tigers have not been to the Elite Eight since 1986, more than a decade before any player on this team was born. The program has never before been to the Final Four.

They’ll have their chance Sunday, against the last team to beat them, no less.

It begs the question: Why not Auburn?

“We know we got the hardest road to the Final Four, so if we make it there and we beat Kentucky, we know we’ll leave our stamp on Auburn basketball history,” McLemore said. “…. This is the road to make history, so we can’t leave anything on the floor.”

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