Auburn’s name was called within the first 10 minutes of Sunday’s Selection Show, hardly giving time to digest the two-hour whirlwind of winning the SEC and finding out it had been sent out to begin the NCAA Tournament in Spokane, Washington, as a No. 4 seed, Auburn’s immediate reaction was confusion and a sense of disrespect.

“It was a little shocking for a minute,” Auburn forward Chris Moore said Thursday in Spokane. “It was like, ‘All the way to Spokane?’ We knew we were probably going to get disrespected, and we did.”

But come Tuesday, Auburn had to make the trip.

There are three Alabama schools in Spokane, and of the teams with the six longest trips for the first round of the NCAA Tournament, five of them are in the two Spokane pods. No. 13 seed Yale, Auburn’s opponent for a 3:15 p.m. CT tipoff Friday, made the furthest trek of any team in the field.

Auburn chartered a flight from Montgomery to Spokane. It’s a roughly 4.5-hour flight.

Moore immediately went to sleep.

“There could be a thunderstorm out there, anything happens, a bird could hit the plane and do anything, C-Mo is still asleep and we land and he’s awake,” forward Jaylin Williams said. “We’re like ‘Dude, you didn’t feel none of that?’”

Auburn’s team and staff took the flight along with the Auburn band and cheer team. After sitting down for the first hour of the flight, several players made their way to the back of the plane, and began playing games.

Center Dylan Cardwell said they played Head’s Up — a cellphone game similar to 20 Questions where someone has to guess the word written on the phone held above their head. He said center Johni Broome did magic tricks.

Cardwell calls him “The Great Johdini” now.

Asked about his magic tricks Thursday afternoon in Spokane, Broome didn’t reveal his secrets.

“Ask Tre,” he said, pointing to Tre Donaldson sitting next to him.

“I’m not telling anybody about no magic, first of all,” Donaldson said.

“Yeah, I do magic tricks though,” Broome said.

They also played a game of Would You Rather, discussing superpowers the players wanted.

“Mine would be super speed,” Cardwell said. “I feel like it’s the best one. You can run fast, you can time travel. You can also teleport. You can also slow down. It’s pretty OP.”

Cardwell said Broome has the best choice of power. Broome wanted to freeze time.

“I just feel like it’s very useful to move around,” Broome said. “You can make shots. You can freeze time and get a bucket.”

“He’s always talking about freezing time,” Cardwell said. “Pretty much cheat in basketball. He cheats for our benefit.”

Forward Chad Baker-Mazara wanted to be invisible.

“Just so I can sneak into places, see people talking bad about me,” Baker-Mazara said. “Got concerts you could go see, you can go to fun stuff.”

Well, which concert?

“Bad Bunny, for sure,” Baker-Mazara said. “Gonna go out there and be turnt up on stage with nobody seeing me. I’m just out there living.”

Williams joined them, too. He hates flying. It’s why he picked teleportation for his power.

“Just cause, I’m lowkey lazy,” Williams explained. “I don’t like to go anywhere outside my house. So imagine if I’m just sitting here, and be like, ‘Dang, I want to go to Auburn right now.’ I could do whatever I want.”

“Yeah, I would beat everybody here, have my luggage.”

The ability to find fun on a long plane ride, Williams said, speaks to how close this team is. That while the magnitude of the games now can’t get any bigger as part of the NCAA Tournament, they aren’t nervous.

And maybe, for Williams and Donaldson who are both afraid of even slight turbulence, it’s just a distraction when cooped up on a charter flight for so long.

When the team got to Spokane, Williams was immediately frustrated. He tried connecting to the hotel TV to play video games. He couldn’t figure it out at first.

“We might be here a little while,” Williams said, thinking about not having video games in his hotel room to play.

Eventually, he connected.

Arriving on Tuesday allowed Auburn’s players to have multiple nights to adjust to the time change of being out west, two hours behind central time at Auburn. Baker-Mazara said he slept for nearly slept for 10 hours the first night here.

Baker-Mazara said was glad the team chose to fly out Tuesday. He said he was going to recommend it to the staff if not.

A handful of Auburn players went on a bike ride through Spokane during their free time. They rented bikes from the team hotel and rode aimlessly through town just to sightsee. They saw the Spokane River and the waterfall in the middle of downtown Spokane and went to clothing stores.

Baker-Mazara got a new pair of AirPods, too. He lost his in Auburn.

But they’d have to go back to the hotel. There was film to watch.

“We’re not trying to use this as a vacation,” Williams said. “It’s more of a business trip than anything.”

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