'I told her I was sorry': How Auburn basketball must grapple with crushing Yale upset

SPOKANE, Wash. — Jaylin Williams texted his mom.

Shantel Williams wanted to watch her son play in his last NCAA Tournament, but Auburn basketball's shipment to Washington for the first and second rounds of March Madness made that difficult. She couldn't make a flight across the country happen, and she was thus forced to watch the game back at home on TV.

That's what made No. 4 seed Auburn's 78-76 upset loss to 13th-seeded Yale on Friday even more heartbreaking. After 141 games at Auburn and a five-year career that featured the Tigers winning two championships, including the 2024 SEC Tournament title, Williams, the all-time winningest player in program history, didn't have his mom in attendance to watch his final collegiate game.

"I told her I was sorry," Williams said of his text message. "She was like, 'It's OK, Jaylin. You're always a winner.' That really hit me. I'm more than just a basketball player. That just hit me."

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Williams was one of a handful of players to make himself available to reporters postgame. His chair was poetically positioned smack in the middle of the room, ready to speak as an Auburn athlete for the final time: "No one on this team looked down at Yale," Williams said with every camera and recorder in his face. "We respected them. We knew going in what they could do. They won their league, they had confidence. We won our conference.

"They had just as much confidence as any player. They're still human, they've still been playing basketball their whole life. It was just their afternoon."

Sophomore point guard Tre Donaldson sat slumped over in a corner, leaning on a wall while he stewed on what had just transpired minutes before: "No I haven't," Donaldson said when asked if he's ever suffered a defeat as crushing as the one to the Bulldogs .

Third team All-American center Johni Broome was parked near Donaldson, hood on over his head. He glanced up only to acknowledge teammate Chaney Johnson, who had come over to provide an encouraging handshake and brief hug.

"You hurt for players like J-Will and Johni," Johnson said. "... This is (Williams') last year, this is his last run. ... You want to go all the way for the guys like him, and for the rest of the guys on the team. But we just didn't get the job done. Not really much more we could do right now."

This version of the Tigers was, in many ways, coach Bruce Pearl's best of the 10 teams he's had on the Plains. The 2019 roster reached the Final Four and the 2022 team had two first-round NBA draft picks, but this iteration of Auburn was downright dominant, and the sum was often greater than its parts.

Auburn's strength was its depth, and the Tigers earned great success while leaning on it; Auburn won 26 games by double digits this season, won the conference tournament for the third time in program history and finished top 10 nationally in a number of advanced metrics.

History will likely be kind to the 2024 Tigers − hanging a banner does that − but that won't make the upset any easier to stomach in the immediate future.

"BP, he's probably been on me harder than anyone else that's come through Auburn," Williams said of Pearl's impact on him over the last five years. "But that's just because he really believed in me. Even off-the-court things. Just doing the right things, being on time. I respect him enough to do those things.

"I'm going to miss him. I'll stay in touch with him."

Richard Silva is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at rsilva@gannett.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @rich_silva18.