Auburn basketball’s 2023-24 faculty basketball season got here to a screeching halt within the first spherical of the 2024 NCAA Match on Friday.
The 4 seed Tigers and 2024 SEC Match champions entered as a stylish choose to make a deep March Insanity run. That was to start out first with a 13 seed Yale workforce that had simply seven NCAA Match appearances in program historical past, and only one victory for the reason that match expanded to 64 groups in 1985.
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As a substitute, Auburn grew to become a sufferer of March Insanity, falling 78-76 to James Jones’ Yale workforce. It was clearly a disappointing consequence for the Tigers and coach Bruce Pearl, who after the sport felt the necessity to apologize to the SEC for his workforce’s failure to advance previous the primary spherical.
“Effectively first you bought to provide Yale credit score,” Pearl informed sideline reporter Lauren Shehadi in a postgame interview. “They performed a fantastic sport. We performed them a pair years in the past, and they also knew how we play. They had been capable of deal with our strain, notably did a greater job within the second half. They made pictures, they made performs. That is a very good champion.
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“I really feel like I need to apologize to the SEC. We had been the match champions, and we didn’t win, we did not advance, we did not characterize the SEC like we’re succesful. I am very pleased with my workforce. They grinded all 12 months lengthy, they usually had a terrific season.”
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Auburn was pressured to regulate early with the ejection of Chad Baker-Mazada, who was issued a Flagrant 2 foul for elbowing Yale’s August Mahoney within the abdomen — one thing Pearl described as a retaliatory hit. Even with out Baker-Mazada, the Tigers entered halftime with a 41-37 lead, and held quite a few 10-point leads within the second half, together with a 68-58 benefit with 7:35 left to play.
However The Tigers had been held to only eight factors and three made subject targets after that time within the sport, and made simply two of their seven free throw makes an attempt to finish the sport (together with 2 of 6 within the sport’s closing minute). Even with these miscues, Auburn had an opportunity for a walk-off 3 to finish the sport from Okay.D. Johnson. It was off the mark, bringing the rating to its closing conclusion.
Auburn wasn’t the one workforce from the SEC to undergo an early-round exit, nevertheless. With its loss to Yale, the SEC dropped to 1-5 within the NCAA Match. Texas A&M and Alabama, each of which completed their video games after Auburn, gained their respective video games to deliver the convention’s report to 3-5 alongside Tennessee, which gained on Thursday.