AUBURN — Auburn basketball forward Chad Baker-Mazara had always wanted to go to Hawaii.
He never thought it’d be under this circumstance, though; heading to the Aloha State to play in one of college basketball’s premier early season invitationals.
“You’re going to Maui, but at the same time, you’re going to play basketball at a very high level,” Baker-Mazara said Wednesday. “That combined makes me like a kid when you give him some candy.”
The Tigers spent 12-plus hours on the road — technically, in the air — Thursday to get to Maui, where they’ll take part in the 2024 Maui Invitational, beginning with a top-five matchup against No. 5 Iowa State at 8 p.m. CST Monday.
Bruce Pearl‘s Auburn teams are no strangers to an in-season tournament. This is the 15th time in 11 seasons that the Tigers have traveled to play in a multi-team invitational, but there’s yet to be a lineup quite like this one.
Seven of the eight teams in this year’s Maui field were either ranked or receiving votes in the latest AP and USA TODAY polls, with Colorado being the lone exception despite its 4-0 record. Half the field, including Auburn, has a number next to its name, with the third-ranked Tigers and fifth-ranked Cyclones joined by No. 2 UConn and No. 10 North Carolina. And the way the bracket shakes out, Auburn could take a crack at all three.
So, what are the perspectives Auburn is drawing upon to handle such a daunting field? Baker-Mazara and Pearl offered a couple.
“It sort of reminds me a little bit about the road to the Final Four in 2019,” Pearl said. “We looked at that as, ‘Man, somebody’s got to beat Kansas, or North Carolina, or Kentucky along the way.’ You know, somebody’s got to beat Iowa State, or North Carolina, or Dayton, or UConn, somebody along the way. That’s just how we approach it.”
Auburn’s run to its first and only Final Four appearance saw a fifth-seeded bunch of Tigers go through that aforementioned gauntlet. They beat fourth-seeded Kansas in the Round of 32 before getting a Sweet Sixteen win over a top-seeded North Carolina squad, and then they avenged a regular-season loss to second-seeded Kentucky in the Elite Eight, beating the Wildcats 77-71 in overtime to punch a ticket to Minneapolis.
For Baker-Mazara, the comparison he draws is to last season — when Auburn went to Nashville and won the SEC Tournament.
“We take this as if we’re playing in Nashville,” he said. “Basically, it’s one game after the other. It’s just getting ready for that, just trying to get your body used to it earlier — back-to-back-to-back games — especially because it’s against high-caliber teams.”
The Tigers’ run through the Music City saw it take down three teams — South Carolina, Mississippi State and Florida — for its conference tournament title. And they’ll have to do the same if they want to come out of Maui victorious.
Should Auburn beat Iowa State on Monday, it’ll get a game against the winner of Dayton and North Carolina’s bout on Tuesday. If it beats the Flyers or Tar Heels, it’ll get a go against one of four teams — Colorado, Michigan State, Memphis or UConn — on Wednesday to decide first and second place.
It’d be historic for the program, which has never finished in the invitational’s top-two, though this will be just its second appearance. It’s also not lost on the Tigers what a week of winning in Hawaii could do for their prospects on the national stage.
“It might help us become No. 1 in the nation,” Baker-Mazara said. “That’s a goal that I personally want for us, as a team, to reach No. 1 and be at the point where it’s like, ‘OK, we’re the best.’ Hopefully we can hold that throughout the season.”
Adam Cole is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at acole@gannett.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @colereporter.
