It didn’t take long for Auburn forward Cha🌳d Baker-Mazara to comment on his early ejection in No. 4 Auburn’s first-round upset loss in the NCAA Tournament to No. 13 Yale on Friday.
“Lmao yall lame,” Baker-Mazara wrote in a since-deleted post on X from somewhere — perhaps the Tigers’ locker room — at Spoཧkane Veterans Memorial Arena in Washington, adding three laughing emojis at the end.
He followe꧙d with another post a few minutes later, “I believe in my boys they got em!!”
After the 78-76 loss🎶, Auburn coach Bruce Pearl addressed the situation.
“Obviously, the decision to flagrant 2 Chad Baker, that’s a pretty tough call,” Pearl said in his presser. “He had gotten hit about five seconds earlier, got tangled up, got a little bit of an elbow. They let it go — maybe nobody saw it — and about five seconds later, Chad hit him. It was inappropriate, clearly a flagrant 1. The fact that it was elevated to a flagrant 2 was a decision that the official had to make, but it’s obviously a tremendous impact on the outcome.
“Chad is one of our best players. He’s one of our very best playmakers and was a huge part of our game plan and so to lose him and that situation was really, really disruptive to our team on both ends of the floor.”
Three minutes into the first half, Baker-Mazara elbowed Yale’s August Mahoney as the pair sprinted next to each other and neared mid-court, and he was whistled for a flagrant 2 f🅠oul — resulting in an automatic ejection.
Baker-Mazara appeared surprised when informed of t🌸he call before sprinting off the court and down the tunnel toward 🐓the locker room.
“I think really when you look, excessive in nature, completely unnecessary, not a basketball play,” CBS rules analyst Gene Steratore said on the broadcast. “When you see him starting up the court, he lines up his opponent, he looks and then we see him deliver. … There is nothing basketball-related with that whatsoever.”
Baker-Mazara started his college career at Duquesne before transferring to San Diego State and Northwest Florida St🎃ate College 🐷— spending one year at each of those three schools.
This season, h🎀e arrived at Auburn, starting eight of their 34 games, averaging 10.3 points and 3.8 rebounds per game.
Before the NCAA Tournament began, B꧂aker-Mazara described himself as the “first 𓆏villain on the team” and said, , that he embraced that role on the Tigers if it translates to wins.
“I do like being a little villain when it comes to people not liking me and stuff like that,” Baker-Mazara said, according to the outlet. “It just helps me get better and brings the best out of me.”
But against the Bulldogs, it forced the Tigeꦫrs to operate for the final 37 minutes without one of their starters, and they also navigated ano🃏ther injury scare when Jaylin Williams appeared shaken up — though he returned to the game.
Auburn could n𝓰ot handle it in the end, falling in a stunner to end its season.
