Bruce Previews Yale

[aubiefifty 18,113]

 

[aubiefifty 18,113]

 

[aubiefifty 18,113]

 

[aubiefifty 18,113]

 

[aubiefifty 18,113]

 

[aubiefifty 18,113]

collegefootballnews.com

 

Auburn vs Yale Prediction, Game Preview: NCAA Tournament First Round

Pete Fiutak

~3 minutes

---

Auburn (27-7) vs Yale (22-9) prediction and NCAA Tournament First Round game preview.

Auburn vs Yale Basketball

Date: Friday, March 22
Game Time: 4:15 pm ET
Venue: Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, Spokane, WA
How To Watch: TNT
Record: Auburn (27-7), Yale (22-9)
NCAA Tournament Region: East
- 2024 NCAA Tournament Schedule, Predictions, Game Previews, Lines

Auburn vs Yale Game Preview

Why Yale Will Win

Yale Seed: 13, CFN Ranking 1-68: 50
Net Ranking: 83, KenPom Ranking: 84
Consensus Ranking 1-68: 51

Yeah, Yale is an Ivy League team, and yeah, it makes good passes, the right reads, doesn’t turn the ball over, and is ultra-active when it attacks rebounds.

Granted, dealing with Penn and Dartmouth isn’t like handling UConn or North Carolina on the boards, but you have to be able to clean up the defensive glass and not let Auburn get extra chances.

You also can’t turn the ball over and have to control the tempo to keep the big Tiger runs to a minimum.

How do you beat Auburn? You can’t let the score get out of hand. The SEC Tournament champ is 0-4 when scoring fewer than 66 points, 3-5 when scoring fewer than 77, and 24-2 when scoring more.

Yale has allowed 77 points or more just five times, but …

Why Auburn Will Win

Auburn Seed: 4, CFN Ranking 1-68: 4
Net Ranking: 5, KenPom Ranking: 4
Consensus Ranking 1-68: T3

Once Auburn gets on the move and starts to clamp down defensively, forget it.

Yale is an okay three-point shooting team, but it relies on hitting the midrange shots and forcing turnovers to generate quick points by getting to the right spots. Auburn is too quick and too active to let the Bulldogs dictate what they want to do.

As good as Yale is, and as productive as it’s been, it doesn’t shoot well enough. It’s okay from three, but hardly automatic. Worse yet, it’s a miserable team from the free throw line - it doesn’t get there enough.

If Auburn goes Auburn, one big run of points should do it, but …

Auburn vs Yale: Who Will Win

Auburn has to start running right away.

The offense isn’t all about the fast break and getting up and down the floor at a 1000 miles per hour, but it does that for stretches, and that should be enough. Yale has to win on defense, rebounding, and the right shot, but there’s a big problem …

The Ivy needs to score to win. This isn’t some team that wins games 55-52 - Yale has an offense. However, when it scores fewer than 73 points it’s 6-8, and 16-1 when scoring more.

Auburn allows 68 points per game.

[aubiefifty 18,113]

al.com

How a summer meeting made Auburn an SEC champ and ‘dangerous’ March threat

Published: Mar. 20, 2024, 6:45 a.m.

13–16 minutes

Chris Moore said they could have been so much better last season. Dylan Cardwell said the team was made up of cliques. There was a cultural problem, they both agreed. They called last year’s team selfish. They said it held them back. It all ended symbolically with a glimpse at its potential against a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament before a meltdown two hours up Highway 280.

So the coaches called a meeting. It had to stop. It had to stop then.

“They sat us down,” Cardwell said. “They said, we’re going to change our culture. And we did.”

Maybe they didn’t know it then, maybe if not for the vision head coach Bruce Pearl had in finding a different type of player in the transfer portal, but it was this meeting sometime between the loss to Houston and the start of summer workouts that founded what’s become Auburn — the deepest team in America, an SEC champion.

Auburn's Dylan Cardwell, left, and Jaylin Williams (2) hold up the trophy after defeating Florida in an NCAA college basketball game to win the Southeastern Conference tournament Sunday, March 17, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)AP

Pearl required sacrifice to get a collection of 11 players in rotation all willing to agree to accept less for themselves in order to win, the sum greater than its parts.

That means an incredible level of buy-in. It’s buy-in that takes so long to build that it starts with a team meeting just weeks after the previous season ended. It’s buy-in that requires every single player to be fully committed and a culture built so strongly to ensure it lasts.

It lasts nearly a year later, this collection of parts sat in a locker room together in Nashville after cutting down the Bridgestone Arena nets, maybe that buy-in had never been clearer.

“There’s no cliques,” Cardwell said. “We’re all one unit. Of course, there’s going to be people that are closer than with other people but at the end of the day, there’s not a single clique on the team. That’s a first for me.”

At the SEC Tournament, Auburn showed why this culture works. No team in this league has more fun than Auburn. Taking trick shots in pre-game shoot around — a foursome all heaving up half-court shots before going back to the locker room — or a mosh pit and fake boxing matches and smiles so unbecoming of the business-like approach of so many others as the season reaches single-elimination basketball games.

That’s Auburn, and how this team has always functioned in the 2023-24 season.

“This is probably one of the closest teams I’ve been on,” forward Johni Broome said. “Everybody loves each other.”

That translated to a stage at center court Sunday, where Auburn kept dancing onto the podium and hoisted a trophy as SEC champions. All 10 members of Auburn’s rotation post-Lior Berman’s ACL injury scored in two of its three SEC Tournament games including the championship against Florida. It was this depth that separated Auburn from an upset-riddled field and showed why it could win in March.

Auburn forward Jaylin Williams (2) reacts after a Tiger's basket during an NCAA college basketball final game against Florida at the Southeastern Conference tournament Sunday, March 17, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)AP

Broome was named the SEC Tournament MVP. He did so as the best player on a team that doesn’t have a true superstar. He did so playing fewer than 25 minutes per game.

But why? Why stay here and sacrifice minutes and individual stats?

“It is worth it,” Broome said, fending off laughs from point guard Tre Donaldson sitting next to him, trying to make the serious Broome crack a smile. “It always pays off in the end. I’m willing to sacrifice my minutes for wins. Whenever I need to go to my guys, I know they got my back.”

Then Broome cracked up laughing. That was why. That he can genuinely love his teammates to be willing to accept less.

It’s the result of the internal culture change from Auburn’s team meeting. It was a months-long process.

“They bought in early,” graduate student Carter Sobera said. “Not middle of the season, end of the season. It’s like, we kinda got started on that front way earlier than in other years I’ve been here. I keep saying it, but this team just genuinely cares about each other and has since day one.”

Cardwell said the team meeting forced himself and his teammates to be more accountable. To require cleaning out their own lockers and have difficult conversations. It required being humble.

That process had to start with a whole summer to make mistakes. It would not be a quick change to create a new culture and for it to be genuine.

“We couldn’t have conversations and hold everybody accountable because we didn’t have relationships,” Cardwell said. “So you really can’t go across the room and say, ‘Hey, box out for a freakin rebound.’ We can’t really say that because we’re going to take offense to it. They don’t know it’s coming from love. This team, for the most part, everybody knows it’s coming from love because we spent months and months and months building that camaraderie.”

COLUMBIA, MO - MARCH 05 - Auburn’s Dylan Cardwell (44) during the game between the #13 Auburn Tigers and the Missouri Tigers at Mizzou Arena in Columbia, MO on Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Photo by Zach Bland/Auburn TigersZach Bland/Auburn Tigers

Cardwell and forward Jaylin Williams talked about required breakfasts over the summer. Their meeting had to manifest in time spent together to build the culture foundational to its depth. The teammates went out together, practiced together, played games together, whatever it took.

“I feel like we really know each other as brothers,” Moore said. “We all want to see each other succeed. See each other thriving. I feel like that’s a big key.”

“The whole spring and summer, we changed,” Williams said. “We was working harder than I’ve ever worked at Auburn. Some mornings I woke up and didn’t want to go to the gym.”

But that culture change of returners had to be met by blending new faces into these ideals.

Externally, Pearl sold a recruiting pitch antithetical to the modern age of NIL wooing. Whereas so many high schoolers and transfer portal entrants seek money and playing time, Pearl never offered that.

In fact, he sought the opposite.

“Honestly, the first thing I told BP was I just wanted to be a part of a family,” FIU transfer guard Denver Jones said. “Part of an organization. And I want to win. I feel like that was the biggest thing. I knew with the team that we was building, that BP and them was trying to build, I knew we would a shot.”

Jones played 33.4 minutes per game last year at FIU and scored 20.4 points per game. Now, the starting shooting guard at Auburn, Jones is scoring 8.9 points per game and playing 21.7 minutes per game. He has played his best basketball as the season got later.

AUBURN, AL - MARCH 09 - Auburn’s Denver Jones (12) during the game between the #13 Auburn Tigers and the Georgia Bulldogs at Neville Arena in Auburn, AL on Saturday, March 9, 2024. Photo by Zach Bland/Auburn TigersZach Bland/Auburn Tigers

Over Auburn’s last seven games playing the best basketball of his season, Jones is playing 25 minutes per game and scoring more than 12 points per game. It’s still not his numbers from the smaller school. But he knew that would be the case. He didn’t care.

Jones said he finds the challenge of playing in the SEC fun. Here, he said, everyone was the best player on their previous high school or college team. Now, they all formed one cohesive group.

Aden Holloway came to Auburn as a five-star recruit and took on a role bouncing in and out of the starting lineup. That’s not common for a five-star these days. Holloway said that wasn’t what he was expecting when he came to Auburn. Certainly, he had plans of succeeding quickly as a high-volume scoring guard like so many on Pearl’s prior teams.

What Pearl required was efficiency even when Holloway’s shooting struggled in SEC play. So Holloway worked on the other aspects of his game. He became a better passer — he leads Auburn in assist-to-turnover ratio — and an improved defender.

It’s the first time Holloway has accepted a role not being the star and in his first year of college. It’s difficult. He was willing to do it. He was rewarded.

“When it really hit me, we were on the stand and then the confetti fell,” Holloway said minutes after winning an SEC title. “That was one of the craziest moments of my life for sure.”

SIOUX FALLS, SD - NOVEMBER 07 - Auburn's Aden Holloway (1), Auburn’s Chad Baker-Mazara (10), Auburn's K.D. Johnson (0) during the game between the Auburn Tigers and the #20 Baylor Bears at Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, SD on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. Photo by Steven Leonard/Auburn TigersSteven Leonard/Auburn Tigers

Backup forward Chaney Johnson said he came to Auburn from Division II Alabama-Huntsville without a role set in stone. He might have a chance to start, he said, but he didn’t know for sure.

“I didn’t want come into a situation where I was just going to take that leap and just get the ball every time,” Johnson said. “I would rather be part of a better team than be somewhere where I might get a lot of shots, but the team’s not very good. Winning is the main goal.”

That all worked for Auburn to have a sort of Noah’s-Ark-type team. It truly has two of everything and uses every piece. Aden Holloway and Tre Donaldson at point guard. Denver Jones and K.D. Johnson at shooting guard. Chad Baker-Mazara and Chris Moore at small forward. Jaylin Williams and Chaney Johnson at power forward. Johni Broome and Dylan Cardwell at center.

“It was definitely worth it, and it’s going to keep being worth it,” Moore said. “You got a group of guys that believe in each other and once you’ve got that, it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to play against. I feel like we’re the most dangerous team in the country because of our depth and how we don’t have to play guys 30 minutes night in and night out. We can play guys 20, 15 minutes and then the next game it can flip-flopped and there won’t be no egos involved.”

AUBURN, AL - FEBRUARY 14 - Auburn's Johni Broome (4) and Auburn’s Dylan Cardwell (44) during the game between the #13 Auburn Tigers and the #11 South Carolina Gamecocks at Neville Arena in Auburn, AL on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. Photo by Zach Bland/Auburn TigersZach Bland/Auburn Tigers

That depth is why so many metrics love Auburn.

Despite being selected as a No. 4 seed in the East Region and shipped off to an opening two rounds in Spokane, Washington, most computer rankings have Auburn as a top-five team in America. Auburn is No. 4 in KenPom, No. 5 in the NET, No. 5 in T-Rank and No. 2 in the EvanMiya ranking.

Auburn scores the fourth most bench points per game in the country (34.06) and eight in bench minutes percentage (43.1% of the total minutes).

It’s the backbone of an Auburn team that won 26 of 27 games by double digits — 7th in the country in average scoring margin. It’s the only team that is in the top 10 for both offensive and defensive efficiency.

“Even on tough losses, this team has stuck together, man,” Williams said. “We would leave the locker room like we won the game. ‘We can learn from this guys.’”

On the sideline, teammates cheer for each other and genuinely mean it. Sobera said that’s what makes Auburn’s depth work, and why they’re dangerous in a tournament. Teams with less depth will get tired. Auburn doesn’t. Everyone has fresh legs. The pressure is off, the players say, because they know they can rely on someone else to pick them up.

“Chad (Baker-Mazara) is one of my closest friends,” Moore said of his positional counterpart. “I honestly feel like I’ve been knowing Chad my whole life, and that helps us on the court. We trust each other, we have the utmost confidence in each other.”

“It’s probably not normal for other teams, but we make it routine here.”

Auburn is not reliant on any one player, and every player is happy for it to be someone else on any given night.

So it was fitting in the final moments of the SEC championship game — the result just a mere formality — when Pearl subbed off Broome for Cardwell. As Cardwell walked onto the floor, he held his arms up in the air and high-fived Broome. Then Broome dropped his hands, and hugged his teammate.

Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl addresses the crowd after defeating Florida in an NCAA college basketball game to win the Southeastern Conference tournament Sunday, March 17, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)AP

They were both champions. The sacrifice had been worth it. It’s Pearl’s best coaching job at Auburn to turn this collection of parts into a machine. His plan had been validated.

“My staff did an outstanding job with player development and I think the guys did a great job all year long of being unselfish and all being patient and all accepting less individually so we as a team could accomplish more,” Pearl said at a Neville Arena press conference before traveling to Spokane.

Then Pearl sat up in his podium chair, smirked, then chuckled.

“That was pretty good.”

Matt Cohen covers sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

[aubiefifty 18,113]

al.com

The travel chronicles of Auburn’s March Madness flight to Spokane

Updated: Mar. 21, 2024, 5:21 p.m.|Published: Mar. 21, 2024, 4:14 p.m.

5–7 minutes

Auburn’s name was called within the first 10 minutes of Sunday’s Selection Show, hardly giving time to digest the two-hour whirlwind of winning the SEC and finding out it had been sent out to begin the NCAA Tournament in Spokane, Washington, as a No. 4 seed, Auburn’s immediate reaction was confusion and a sense of disrespect.

“It was a little shocking for a minute,” Auburn forward Chris Moore said Thursday in Spokane. “It was like, ‘All the way to Spokane?’ We knew we were probably going to get disrespected, and we did.”

But come Tuesday, Auburn had to make the trip.

There are three Alabama schools in Spokane, and of the teams with the six longest trips for the first round of the NCAA Tournament, five of them are in the two Spokane pods. No. 13 seed Yale, Auburn’s opponent for a 3:15 p.m. CT tipoff Friday, made the second-furthest trek of any team in the field. No. 13 seed Charleston — which is also in Spokane — beat Yale by eight miles.

Auburn chartered a flight from Montgomery to Spokane. It’s a roughly 4.5-hour flight.

Moore immediately went to sleep.

“There could be a thunderstorm out there, the apocalypse, anything happens, a bird could hit the plane and do anything, C-Mo is still asleep and we land and he’s awake,” forward Jaylin Williams said. “We’re like ‘Dude, you didn’t feel none of that?’”

Auburn’s team and staff took the flight along with the Auburn band and cheer team. After sitting down for the first hour of the flight, several players made their way to the back of the plane, and began playing games.

Center Dylan Cardwell said they played Head’s Up — a cellphone game similar to 20 Questions where someone has to guess the word written on the phone held above their head. He said center Johni Broome did magic tricks.

Cardwell calls him “The Great Johdini” now.

Asked about his magic tricks Thursday afternoon in Spokane, Broome didn’t reveal his secrets.

“Ask Tre,” he said, pointing to Tre Donaldson sitting next to him.

“I’m not telling anybody about no magic, first of all,” Donaldson said.

“Yeah, I do magic tricks though,” Broome said.

They also played a game of Would You Rather, discussing superpowers the players wanted.

“Mine would be super speed,” Cardwell said. “I feel like it’s the best one. You can run fast, you can time travel. You can also teleport. You can also slow down. It’s pretty OP.”

Cardwell said Broome has the best choice of power. Broome wanted to freeze time.

“I just feel like it’s very useful to move around,” Broome said. “You can make shots. You can freeze time and get a bucket.”

“He’s always talking about freezing time,” Cardwell said. “Pretty much cheat in basketball. He cheats for our benefit.”

Forward Chad Baker-Mazara wanted to be invisible.

“Just so I can sneak into places, see people talking bad about me,” Baker-Mazara said. “Got concerts you could go see, you can go to fun stuff.”

Well, which concert?

“Bad Bunny, for sure,” Baker-Mazara said. “Gonna go out there and be turnt up on stage with nobody seeing me. I’m just out there living.”

Williams joined them, too. He hates flying. It’s why he picked teleportation for his power.

“Just cause, I’m lowkey lazy,” Williams explained. “I don’t like to go anywhere outside my house. So imagine if I’m just sitting here, and be like, ‘Dang, I want to go to Auburn right now.’ I could do whatever I want.”

“Yeah, I would beat everybody here, have my luggage.”

The ability to find fun on a long plane ride, Williams said, speaks to how close this team is. That while the magnitude of the games now can’t get any bigger as part of the NCAA Tournament, they aren’t nervous.

And maybe, for Williams and Donaldson who are both afraid of even slight turbulence, it’s just a distraction when cooped up on a charter flight for so long.

When the team got to Spokane, Williams was immediately frustrated. He tried connecting to the hotel TV to play video games. He couldn’t figure it out at first.

“We might be here a little while,” Williams said, thinking about not having video games in his hotel room to play.

Eventually, he connected.

Arriving on Tuesday allowed Auburn’s players to have multiple nights to adjust to the time change of being out west, two hours behind central time at Auburn. Baker-Mazara said he slept for nearly slept for 10 hours the first night here.

Baker-Mazara said was glad the team chose to fly out Tuesday. He said he was going to recommend it to the staff if not.

A handful of Auburn players went on a bike ride through Spokane during their free time. They rented bikes from the team hotel and rode aimlessly through town just to sightsee. They saw the Spokane River and the waterfall in the middle of downtown Spokane and went to clothing stores.

Baker-Mazara got a new pair of AirPods, too. He lost his in Auburn.

But they’d have to go back to the hotel. There was film to watch.

“We’re not trying to use this as a vacation,” Williams said. “It’s more of a business trip than anything.”

Matt Cohen covers sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.