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SPOKANE, Wash. — Once the guys to whom it means the most finally ran out of opportunities, a guard named August from a town known for horse racing turned around, took off his shirt and climbed onto a table next to court. He smiled with his mouth open and said nothing.
He was quickly joined by a boy from Morocco who likes to fish, who pointed and yelled at everyone he saw. Behind them, the left-handed Greek sharpshooter from the Chicago suburbs ran into the arms of the 7-foot center who went from freshman backup to a spot on the All-Israel team and the All-Ivy League team in one year. In front of them, a disheveled 16-year-old NBA veteran dangling his 6-foot-11 frame over a railing rushed to hug them. The head coach arrived last, arms outstretched, leaning into a vigorous multi-human scrum that tore off his lapel pin and included an elbow to the head of a writer.
Yale 78, Auburn 76 at Spokane Arena on Friday was both an outcome, a resurgence and another episode of an ongoing and hilarious reckoning. An eclectic No. 13 seed beating a No. 4 seed overloaded with size, athleticism and talent. An Ivy League champion unseats an SEC champion, and not by chance. A timeless moment for a player whose girlfriend is more famous than him. The aerial fantasy of the NCAA Tournament triumphing, once again, over the sulfur cloud that threatens it. The sword was pulled out of the stone and then pierced by a larger one.
“It shouldn’t be a surprise anymore,” said Chris Dudley, the aforementioned former pro and overjoyed alumnus sporting a Yale polo, still searching for his next hug. “This is a good team. It’s a really good team. We have great players. “Just because you go to a good school doesn’t mean you can’t play.”
Of course, it’s a bit surprising, and that’s the point. Assumptions are built into this event. Teams are assigned numbers and, with them, expectations. And then something like Yale happens. A junior guard named John Poulakidas, who abused his mini hoop so much as a kid that he broke the door it was hanging on, whose recruitment was marred by a pandemic, who heads to the gym to shoot after logging starting minutes in the games, drops by a career-high 28 points. And Auburn, ranked seventh in the final Associated Press poll and considered a worthy threat to defending national champion UConn in the East Region, loses in the round of 16 for the first time.
There are those who would warp the structure of the NCAA Tournament essentially to the detriment of the Yales of the world, probably because the Yales of the world continue to do these things. The Bulldogs did it in 2016, too, defeating Baylor in the first round. With formidable but challenging San Diego State awaiting Sunday, it’s not unreasonable to believe the Bulldogs can be the second straight Ivy League team to reach the Sweet 16, following Princeton in 2023. “That’s what makes March Madness be special,” Yale Big said. the man Danny Wolf said Friday. “It’s games like this.”
YALE MEN’S BASKETBALL WINS ITS SECOND NCAA TOURNAMENT GAME IN SCHOOL HISTORY pic.twitter.com/iqFjZVsTL5
– CBS Sports (@CBSSports) March 22, 2024
These are days like the best day of John Poulikidas’s life, when it seemed like he had burst into the world.
That mini hoop hung over the front door of the home in Naperville, Illinois, and looked inward toward a spacious common area. Plenty of space for the children, especially the two boys, to play. Every time it rang, it chipped the paint off the door, much to Hadi Poulakidas’ dismay. But mom never moved the hoop. That was life. “She left me alone,” Poulakidas said in an extremely loud locker room Thursday.
He became obsessed with the game, wearing NBA jerseys to school every day, watching games every night and giving up on any other sporting endeavors. “It’s been what I eat, sleep and breathe since I was a kid,” he said. Yale associate head coach Matt Kingsley discovered the high school version of Poulakidas in June, destroying a Chicago-area summer league with his Neuqua Valley High School team, making impossible shot after impossible shot. The pandemic interfered (Yale coach James Jones never saw Poulakidas play live, in fact, during the recruiting process), but Yale was tenacious and showed how it would use the big guard in its system. An analytical player with a family that emphasized academics was sold.
By the time his junior year arrived, Poulakidas was a starter, a proven shooter and a perfectionist who was completely in control of the potential outcomes of his workouts. “He tells me what he wants to do,” Kingsley said Thursday. “He has a vision of the shots he can make.” Turns out, a lot of them. Poulakidas entered the postseason as Yale’s second-leading scorer for the second consecutive season, and his 75 three-pointers were the second-highest single-season total in program history. He was also perhaps best known, if anything, as the boyfriend of Kylie Feuerbach, who plays for the rock band phenomenon known as Iowa women’s basketball. No one would have guessed that all of this was a prelude to what happened against Auburn. ..but maybe they should have.
“I always tell him that if we win the game, it’s going to be because of him,” Wolf said. “There aren’t many shot makers in the country that can get a bucket like him.”
On Friday afternoon, many years later and a few thousand miles to the west, the Poulakidas’ oldest son had another moment with a ball and a hoop that chipped off some paint. He was a college student now, but he was no longer worried about the damage his shot could do, not when he already had five 3-pointers on the night, not when he had hit an absurd jumper over Auburn big man Dylan Cardwell, 6 -eleven. and he stared at his own bench as he ran back to the track. “After I took my first two shots,” he said, “the floodgates opened.” And now there were two minutes left and his team was facing a one-point deficit in the NCAA Tournament and he let it fly from well beyond the 3-point arc. He hit him. Those in Spokane Arena susceptible to magic lost it. Completely.
As he backed down the track, Poulakidas turned to the crowd. He saw his parents.
Oh Lord, The Scream.
Divine, without a doubt. Not providential. Again: you have to work to drive that sword through the stone. “I love what basketball can do for you and the people around you, if that makes any sense,” Poulakidas said. “It’s crazy how winning a game today, winning a game last weekend (in the Ivy League tournament) against Brown, can completely unite a group of people. “I’m very grateful and happy to be a part of that.”
It had many parts. August Mahoney, senior captain and native of Saratoga Springs, New York (town motto: “Health, History and Horses”), who overcame three fouls in the first half to finish with 14 points in 26 minutes, including a 9-for-11 .showing at the free throw line. Yassine Gharram, the Moroccan native who jumped in 17 minutes into the action and scored seven points, hitting the free throw that put Yale ahead by four with 14.4 seconds left. Wolf, the leading scorer who made a field goal in the first half but hit two keys. free throws to extend the lead with 45 seconds left. Jones, the criminally underrated head coach approaching 400 wins with an Ivy League school, who donned a Yankees cap in the locker room after warning against the emotional overindulgence he condemned to the team. him seven years earlier.
“I tried to control the reactions,” Jones said, “and make them understand that we have more work to do.”
They understand it, even if no one else does.
On the eve of the NCAA tournament, Dudley texted an old TV foil named Charles Barkley, warning him not to underestimate the Bulldogs. “They can play at full speed,” Dudley said. If he was right, he was set to enjoy his Friday night more than he expected. But these are the moments that surprise you. You don’t always get where you want to go quickly. Most of the time, you just chip away at it until you get there.
(Photo by John Poulakidas: Steph Chambers/Getty Images)