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No. 13 Yale rallied from a 10-point second-half deficit to defeat No. 4 Auburn 78-76 on Friday after Auburn had countless opportunities to tie or take the lead in the final 30 seconds.
The Tigers led 61-51 with 9:53 left before Yale slowly chipped away at the lead thanks to an Auburn scoring drought. The Tigers went more than three minutes without scoring and Yale cut the lead to four with 4:41 left.
Yale then took a 73-72 lead on a three-pointer by John Poulakidas with 2:11 left. The teams traded missed shots before Poulikidas committed an off-ball foul on Auburn’s Denver Jones with 46 seconds left.
From there, the Bulldogs held on. Somehow.
Jones, an 88% free throw shooter, missed the first set of a 1-and-1 before Danny Wolf hit two more free throws to extend the lead to three. Auburn had a chance to tie the game with less than 30 seconds left, but Tre Donaldson’s 3-pointer crashed off the rim.
Then, after Yassine Gharram made one of two free throws, Auburn’s KD Johnson was fouled when he made a layup with 9.4 seconds left.
Johnson missed his free throw, but Auburn got the ball on the possession arrow after a tied rebound.
Tre Donaldson was then fouled under the basket on the inbounds pass and headed to the free throw line. He missed both of his free throws…and Auburn got the rebound. Johni Broome missed a game-tying shot when he crashed hard to the ground and Jaylin Williams had a shot blocked before time expired.
Broome appeared to suffer an injury to his right knee when he fell to the ground and was sitting on the court as Yale celebrated its victory.
Poulakidas scored a game-high 28 points. He was 10 of 15 from the field and 6 of 9 from the 3-point line. Broome scored 24 points and was 7-for-10 from the field and 9-for-11 from the line.
The victory is the first in the NCAA tournament for Yale since the Bulldogs upset No. 5 Baylor as a No. 12 seed in 2016. The Bulldogs had made two appearances in March Madness since then and lost both of their first-round games. as No. 14 seeds.
Auburn’s loss continued a horrible start to the NCAA tournament for the SEC. The Tigers became the fifth SEC team to lose in the first round, as they fell minutes after Florida lost to Colorado. Mississippi State, Kentucky and South Carolina all lost on Thursday. Tennessee was the only SEC school to record a victory on the first day of the tournament.
The Tigers entered the NCAA tournament as SEC tournament champions and were the seventh seed at BetMGM to win the national title. A compelling case could be made that Auburn was not seeded as high as the No. 4 seed heading into the tournament. But Auburn didn’t play as a favorite on Friday.
Auburn had numerous opportunities to defeat Yale over the course of the second half and simply couldn’t do it. The Tigers also missed Chad Baker-Mazara. He was ejected in the first five minutes of the game for a flagrant 2 foul on Yale’s August Mahoney. Baker-Mazara entered the game as Auburn’s third-leading scorer.