The Stretch 4: Auburn knows what it must do to beat Yale in the first round
“If we can be that Auburn team over and over again, I find us very hard to stop.”
(@AuburnMBB/Twitter)
SPOKANE, Wash. — Bruce Pearl says that, oftentimes, the toughest game to win in a tournament is the very first one.
Five years ago, when his Auburn team won the SEC Tournament and then ran all the way to the Final Four, there was some real truth to that statement.
Auburn blitzed through a series of blue blood programs in March Madness, beating Kansas by 14, North Carolina by 17 and Kentucky by six.
But its first round game against New Mexico State was decided by just one point, and it ended with the Aggies missing two free throws and an open corner 3 at the buzzer:
On Friday, Pearl will take another SEC Tournament winner into the Big Dance against a clear-cut underdog. Auburn, which has never lost a first-round game at the NCAA Tournament, is favored over Ivy League tournament champion Yale by around a dozen points. KenPom likes the Tigers by 13.
“We understand that, you know, if we played Yale a lot of times over a period of time, we would have the advantage — because we're deeper and we're a little bigger,” Pearl said. “And folks would say we're better. We have a better seed than they do.
“But they can beat us in a game. Absolutely.”
The NCAA Tournament is a thrilling yet inherently unfair way to determine the best team in the country. It’s a format that lends itself to huge upsets and Cinderella runs. A squad might have been clearly superior over the course of a long season, but all that matters is if it was better on that one day. It’s do-or-die, over and over again.
And this Yale team has already shown it won’t back down against better opponents this season — even in the far-away land of Spokane, Washington.
In its second game of the season, Yale traveled to face Gonzaga, not too far from the Spokane Arena. Yale lost by 15, but it was up by 10 points early.
A month later, at legendary Allen Fieldhouse, Yale led Kansas by 11 in the first half and didn’t lose its advantage until midway through the second half.
“I felt back then, when we played Kansas, if we got an opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament, that I like our chances playing on a neutral court against basically anybody in the country,” Yale head coach James Jones said Thursday. “Well, we got anybody in the country with Auburn — so we have to be ready to play.”
There’s no looking ahead for Auburn in this NCAA Tournament. Not when Yale has a history of scaring favorites, and even knocking one off, in the first round. Not when the other side of the four-team pod in Spokane features a San Diego State squad that played for a national championship last year and a UAB squad that would love nothing more than to stay hot with its offense against an in-state power.
Auburn can’t go on a run without winning the first one. For a team that has taken every matchup and every scouting report seriously, overconfidence shouldn’t be an issue Friday in Spokane. The Tigers just need to stick to their well-worn script.
“Same mentality, same defense, same effort, same energy, same attitude, same passion that we played with in the three games at the SEC Tournament,” center Dylan Cardwell said. “If we can be that Auburn team over and over again, I find us very hard to stop.”
For a full breakdown of Auburn’s first-round NCAA Tournament showdown with Yale in the Pacific Northwest, here’s a very special edition of The Stretch 4.
PF Jaylin Williams (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
The keys to attacking an ‘underrated’ Yale defense
A lot has been made of Auburn’s matchup on defense against Yale’s offense — specifically the threats of skilled 7-footer Danny Wolf and high-level 3-point shooters August Mahoney and John Poulakidas. (We’ll have more on that later in this newsletter, and you can also check out Wednesday’s deeper dive on the matchup.)
But there hasn’t been as much written about Auburn’s offense against Yale’s defense.