Just about two hours after Auburn won the SEC Tournament championship over Florida, it turned around for the Selection Show, still draped in championship gear in a ballroom at the downtown Nashville Westin hotel where the team stayed all week.

Auburn was drawn as a No. 4 seed in the East Region. It will play its first game in Spokane.

Both Bruce Pearl and Steven Pearl were disappointed with Auburn’s seed line and location. Bruce Pearl quipped it might payback for Auburn getting to play in Birmingham last season as a No. 9 seed.

No matter, Auburn will be boarding a plane to Washington this week. Here’s a look at who else is joining Auburn there.

No. 5 seed San Diego State

NET ranking: 20th

KenPom ranking: 21st

What to know: San Diego State went to the Final Four last year and returns many key pieces of that team. It gets a No. 5 seed out of what was a very difficult Mountain West conference this season.

It’s also Chad Baker-Mazara’s former school, in what could be a potential Round of 32 matchup. San Diego State’s name was called on the Selection Show before Auburn’s and Baker-Mazara was clearly happy to see the Aztecs in the field.

San Diego State is built on defense. Its defense is the 10th best nationally per KenPom’s efficiency rating. But in the same metric, San Diego State’s offense is outside the top 60. That could be a difficult matchup, especially since San Diego State is a good rebounding team.

Center Jaedon LeDee is a legit national player of the year candidate, especially so according to KenPom which has the LeDee as among its top five in its national player of the year metric.

He’s averaging 21.1 points per game this season and 8.4 rebounds per game.

No. 12 UAB

NET Ranking: 104th

KenPom Ranking: 106th

What to know: What a time for basketball in Alabama. The state sent four teams to March Madness and three of them will be in Spokane. Auburn and UAB are in the same pod and Alabama is also in Spokane in a different pod.

The Blazers got here by winning an upset-riddled American Athletic Conference championship. UAB finished fourth in the AAC regular season and then beat top-seeded USF on the way to a title. It beat Temple in the final which beat FAU — the only other tournament team out of the AAC.

No. 13 Yale

NET ranking: 83rd

KenPom ranking: 84th

What to know: Yale will be Auburn’s opening opponent in the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

The first player on that team Bruce Pearl mentioned is 7-foot center Danny Wolf. With good reason. Wolf is scoring more than 14 points per game this season and has shown an ability to be a threat from beyond the arc, too, making 34% of his 3-point attempts this season.

At that size, Wolf averages nearly a double-double per game with 9.8 rebounds a game as his average.

Yale may not be elite in any one thing, and frankly, Yale came out of the Ivy League as a relative upset compared to the league’s top team: Princeton.

But Yale doesn’t turn the ball over often — its turnover percentage is in the top 20 nationally — and has much more size than Auburn — something that has given the Tigers trouble in the past.

The Blazers have a top 25 offensive rebounding percentage according to KenPom, and a top 60 offensive efficiency rating.

What’s next?

Should Auburn win its Spokane pod and advance to the second weekend, it will go to Boston for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8.

There, Auburn would more than likely play No. 1 overall seed UConn in what would likely be effectively a true road game. The East Region of the bracket is loaded with No. 2 seed Iowa State and No. 3 seed Illinois also in the field.

Matt Cohen covers sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]