The Stretch 4: Why Maui could matter in March
Three high-caliber games in three days? For an Auburn basketball team that wants to contend for a title, this Maui Invitational is huge.
(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
AUBURN — By the time this newsletter gets published Thursday morning, Auburn basketball will already be an hour into its travels.
The Tigers won’t open the Maui Invitational until Monday, but they’re getting there several days early. That’ll give Auburn extra time to get adjusted to the time difference, ramp up preparations for Iowa State and do some fun team-building away from basketball while in paradise.
“I'm just excited to be able to spend some time with my second family outside of Auburn, especially in a place like Maui,” small forward Chad Baker-Mazara said Wednesday. “I've personally wanted to go to Maui my whole life. I never thought it was gonna be in a way where both of my worlds collide, where you're going to Maui, but at the same time, you're going to play basketball at a very high level.
“That makes me feel like a kid when you give him some candy.”
The Maui Invitational has been around since 1984, yet only two SEC teams have won it while they were members of the conference: Vanderbilt in 1986 and Kentucky in 1993. It’s extremely difficult to win three games in three days, especially when the tournament tries to put together the best field possible, year in and year out.
“The way I look at it is we have a chance to play three great teams on a neutral site, and really find out where we're at,” Bruce Pearl said Wednesday. “But also, potentially, (we’ll) help our NCAA Tournament resume, if we can be competitive.”
Auburn opens with Iowa State on Monday in what will be a matchup featuring two of the top three teams in the tournament, no matter what metric you use. UConn, the back-to-back defending national champion, is on the other side of the bracket.
After the top-five showdown to start, Auburn will play either a top-10 North Carolina team or an always tricky mid-major force in Dayton on Tuesday. The rest of the field includes Memphis, Michigan State and Colorado — all top-70 teams on KenPom.
“It sort of reminds me a little bit about the road to the Final Four in 2019, and we looked at that as, ‘Man, somebody's got to beat Kansas, or North Carolina, or Kentucky along the way,’” Pearl said. “You know, somebody's got to beat Iowa State, or North Carolina, or Dayton, or UConn along the way. That's just how we approach it. So, I'm kind of looking at it as one game at a time. We've got one game.
“And what would constitute a successful trip? Obviously, we'd love to play great basketball against the best teams in the country and see if we could win a couple.”
Auburn went to Maui, beating Xavier and Arizona around a loss to a star-studded Duke team, during its season that finished at the Final Four. This field could be even tougher, but that’s something it’s embracing.
“It's part of the reason I came here,” point guard JP Pegues said. “It's always been my dream to play at this level on a nightly basis.”
The Tigers got battle-tested the last time they were out in Maui. And they know they will only play this many games with this little rest one other time this season: The very end of it, when it could have three in three days at the SEC Tournament or two in three days in the NCAA Tournament.
“To be honest, we take this as if we're playing in Nashville for the tournament,” Baker-Mazara said. “Basically, it's one game after the other. It's just getting ready for that, just trying to get your body used to it earlier — back-to-back-to-back games — especially because it's against high-caliber teams.
“We're really looking forward to this. It might help us become No. 1 in the nation. That's a goal that I personally want for us as a team, to reach No. 1 and be at the point where it's like, ‘OK, we're the best.’”
While Auburn takes to the skies to get to Maui today, let’s get geared up early for that massive early-season tournament with this week’s edition of The Stretch 4.
PG/SG Tahaad Pettiford (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
Auburn’s depth should be a weapon in Maui
It’s been said countless times in this newsletter over the years, but it’s worth repeating: Few power-conference teams in the country go as deep on their bench as Auburn. Relying on strength in numbers is engrained in the program’s DNA.
And when you start thinking about playing three high-level games in three days, it helps to be able to lean on that.