By Vickie Sellers
Yale making its seventh NCAA Appearance and fourth under head coach James Jones
No. 13 YALE vs. No. 4 AUBURN
Fri., Mar. 22 – 4:15 p.m. EDT
Spokane Arena
Spokane, Wash.
TV: TNT
MarchMadness Live Video | Live Stats | Game Notes
SPOKANE, Wash. – The Yale men’s basketball team has had some time to savor Sunday’s last-second victory over Brown in the championship game of the Ivy League Tournament. Now it’s time for the Bulldogs to turn their attention to their first round NCAA Tournament matchup with Auburn. Yale, the No. 13 seed in the East Region, meets No. 4 Auburn on Friday at 4:15 p.m. EDT at Spokane Arena. The game will be televised nationally on TNT. The winner advances to Sunday’s second round to meet the winner of the San Diego State-UAB game.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
• The Bulldogs (22-9, 11-3 Ivy) earned the Ivy League’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament by winning the Ivy Tournament in thrilling fashion. Matt Knowling’s baseline floater off a feed from Bez Mbeng as time expired lifted second-seeded Yale to a 62-61 victory over No. 4 Brown last Sunday at Columbia’s Levien Gym. The Bulldogs had trailed by six with 27 seconds remaining.
• Danny Wolf was named the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament. He had nine points, 13 rebounds, two assists and four blocks in the championship game after tallying 19 points, 10 rebounds, three assists and two blocks in the semifinal win over No. 3 Cornell. Wolf, a unanimous first team All-Ivy selection, is the Ivy League’s leading rebounder (9.8 rpg.) and led Yale in scoring (14.3 ppg.). Wolf has posted 14 double-doubles on the season.
• John Poulakidas, who scored a team-high 18 points, including a couple of big, late three-pointers against Brown, was named to the all-tournament team.
• Knowling, who hit the shot that put Yale in the tournament, leads the Ivy League in field goal percentage (.569). His career .596 percentage is the fourth best in school history.
• August Mahoney is averaging 15.7 points over his last three games while shooting 12-of-20 (60 percent) from three-point range. Mahoney hit a big three-pointer in the final minutes in the come-from-behind win over Brown in the Ivy championship game. He finished with 15 points after scoring 16 in the semifinal win over Cornell.
• Bez Mbeng is a two-time Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year honoree. His 57 steals are the third most in a season in school history and his 135 career assists are tied for the fifth most in Yale history. In addition, Mbeng, a second team All-Ivy selection, has an Ivy League leading 131 assists, including the one on Knowling’s winning shot against Brown last Sunday.
• All five Yale starters average double figures in scoring.
• Yale head coach James Jones‘ three guiding principles are rebounding, defense and sharing the ball, and his team has excelled in all areas this season. The Bulldogs lead the Ivy League in field goal percentage defense (.415) and rebound margin (+4.8) and were third in assists (15.4 per game).
• Yale is 20-3 when it outrebounds its opponents and 1-6 when it is outrebounded. The Bulldogs are 19-4 when they lead at halftime.
• Yale is making its seventh NCAA Tournament appearance and fourth under the direction of Jones. The Bulldogs’ only NCAA victory came in 2016 over Baylor in Providence. Yale’s all-time tournament record is 1-7.
• The Bulldogs’ 22 victories are one shy of the modern-day school record set by the 2019-20 team that finished 23-7. Yale won 30 games in 1906-07. The Bulldogs have now won 20 or more games in four of the last five seasons and seven times in Jones’ tenure as head coach. Prior to Jones’ arrival, Yale had won 20 or more games in only four of the previous 107 seasons.
• The Bulldogs are making their second trip to Spokane this season. Yale fell to Gonzaga 86-71 back on Nov. 10 in a game that was closer than the final score indicated. The Bulldogs raced out to a 16-6 early lead and the first half featured eight lead changes and eight ties.
• Yale also played a competitive game at Kansas in December before falling 75-60. The Bulldogs had an 11-point first-half lead and led 33-32 at halftime.
• Five of Yale’s nine losses have come by five points or less and a sixth came in overtime – 75-65 to Weber State.
HISTORY LESSONS
The Bulldogs are playing Auburn for just the second time. The first meeting came in the 2021-22 season, an 86-64 Tiger victory. Seven current Bulldogs appeared in the game – August Mahoney (13 minutes, 2 points), Bez Mbeng (10 minutes, 2 points), Matt Knowling (8 minutes, 2 points), Jack Molloy (6 minutes, 2 points), Yassine Gharram (2 minutes, 1 point), Yussif Basa-Ama (4 minutes, 0 points) and John Poulakidas (3 minutes, 0 points).
In addition to the game with Auburn, Yale also has history with the SEC. The most memorable moment came against LSU in the championship game of the 1969 Rainbow Classic, a 97-94 Yale victory. Jim Morgan ’71 scored 35 points to pace the Bulldogs, while Pete Maravich scored 34 points to lead the Tigers. That was Yale’s last win over an SEC school. The Bulldogs also played LSU the 2019 NCAA Tournament, falling to the Tigers 79-74.
SCOUTING AUBURN
The Tigers, with a 27-7 overall record and a No. 5 national NET rating, are coming off an 86-67 win over Florida in the SEC Tournament championship game. Auburn, which is on a six-game winning streak, is making its 13th NCAA Tournament appearance and fifth in the last six tournaments. All-American Johni Broome is a semifinalist for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Award. In addition, he was an All-SEC first team selection. Broome leads the team in scoring (16.2 ppg.), rebounding (8.4 rpg.) and blocked shots (77). Jaylin Williams (12.4 ppg.) and Chad Baker-Mazara (10.3 ppg.) also average double figures in scoring. Bruce Pearl is in his 10th season as the head coach at Auburn and guided the Tigers to the NCAA Final Four in 2019. There also is a familiar face on the Auburn bench in Ira Bowman, who was the 1996 Ivy League Player of the Year at Penn.
COURTESY YALE ATHLETIC COMMUNICATIONS
GAME NOTES
https://auburntigers.com/documents/2024/3/20/NCAA_First_Round_Game_Notes.pdf
*Auburn and Yale will tip off at 3:15 p.m. CT on Friday from Spokane Arena in Spokane, Washington. Andy Burcham and Randall Dickey will have the radio call on 94.3 FM and on the Varsity Network App. The game will be televised on TNT with Lisa Byington, Steve Smith, Robbie Hummel and Lauren Shehadi on the call.
*For Auburn, this will be the program’s 13th NCAA Tournament appearance all-time and the fifth appearance in the last six tournaments. The Tigers have won their opening game in 11 straight tournaments, including last year, and will look to keep that streak alive this year as a 4 seed against No. 13 seed Yale in the opening round.
*PLAYER TO WATCH: JAYLIN WILLIAMS
Graduate senior forward Jaylin Williams enters the NCAA Tournament as the team’s second-leading scorer and rebounder averaging 12.4 points and 4.4 rebounds per game. The All-SEC Second Team selection has scored in double figures 21 times this season, including five times in the last seven games, and 63 times in his career.
In the age of the transfer portal, Williams is one of only three five-year seniors in the SEC to play their entire careers at the same school along with Josiah Jordan-James and Santiago Vescovi from Tennessee. Williams has played in the most career games (140) and won the most games (113) of any player in program history.
INSIDE THE SERIES: YALE
This will be the second all-time meeting between Auburn and Yale. In their first and only meeting, the Tigers prevailed with an 86-64 victory over the Bulldogs on Dec. 4, 2021, at Neville Arena. Five players scored in double figures for Auburn, led by K.D. Johnson with 19 points and Jabari Smith who finished with 17 points and seven rebounds.
Auburn is 6-1 (.857) all-time against the Ivy League having played Columbia (2-0), Cornell (1-0), Dartmouth (1-0), Harvard (0-1), Penn (1-0) and Yale (1-0).
Friday’s game will be AU’s first-ever NCAA Tournament game against a team from the Ivy League. Yale is the 30th different opponent the Tigers have faced in the Big Dance.
TIGERS IN THE NCAA TOURNAMENT
This is the 13th NCAA Tournament appearance for Auburn (1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024) and the fifth appearance in the last six tournaments. The Tigers are 19-12 all-time in NCAA Tournament play and 7-4 under head coach Bruce Pearl. Last year, they beat Iowa and lost to top-seeded Houston in the Round of 32.
For the second time in program history, Auburn is a No. 4 seed. In 2018, the Tigers defeated 13th-seeded College of Charleston 62-58 in San Diego, California, in the first round of the Midwest Region before falling 84-53 to No. 5 seed Clemson in the second round.
Auburn has won its opening game in the NCAA Tournament in 11 straight appearances since the fifth-seeded Tigers lost to No. 12 seed Richmond, 72-71, in the first round of the 1984 East Region in what was the program’s first-ever tournament game.
DEFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS
The Tigers are playing their best basketball of the season on both ends of the floor. They currently rank second in the country behind Houston (37.9%) in field-goal percentage defense, holding opponents to 38.4 percent shooting. In the SEC Tournament, the Auburn defense held each of its three opponents to a combined 35.2 percent from the field and 17.5 percent from long range while giving up an average of 62.7 points per game.
COURTESY AUBURN ATHLETIC COMMUNICATIONS
