It came down to the wire, but the fourth-seeded Auburn Tigers just couldn’t get the job done against the 13th-seeded Yale Bulldogs Friday night.

While Auburn led by 10 points with just less than 7:30 to play, the Tigers’ shooting efforts fell cold — from the field and from the free-throw line, resulting in a 78-76 Auburn loss and an early exit from the NCAA Tournament.

Here’s everything Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl said following the loss.

Opening statement: I’d like to congratulate Yale on a great victory. We respected our opponent, we played them a couple of years ago and they played us tough. We knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into. We knew we’d have to play well to win and we did not take care of the ball, we turned it over too much. But it was a great game. Obviously they made big shots. You know, John (Poulakidas) got hot and we just couldn’t guard him. He made some big plays, some big buckets and that’s what a guy’s gotta do at the end of things. We were in foul trouble from the very beginning. Obviously the decision to flagrant 2 Chad Baker(-Mazara), that’s a pretty tough call. He had gotten hit about five seconds earlier, got tangled up, got a little bit of an elbow, they didn’t call it, maybe nobody saw it. About five seconds later, Chad hit him. It was inappropriate. Clearly a flagrant 1, but the fact that it was elevated to a flagrant 2 is a decision that the official had to make. But it obviously had a tremendous impact on the outcome. Chad is one of our best players, one of our very best playmakers and was a huge part of our gameplan. And so to lose him in that situation was really disruptive to our team on both ends of the floor.

On what the season has meant to him as a whole: It’s tough to reflect on a season when you go through one of the most disappointing losses in your career. I’ve been in the 12 spot, we’ve had these great wins. This is the biggest upset in an NCAA Tournament that I think I’ve experienced. I’m glad we lost to a really good team in Yale, great kids, great coaches. As a Jewish-American coach, I’m really proud of Danny Wolf as one of the best Jewish basketball players in the country. Some people are afraid to point that out or get uncomfortable with it, I’m just not. And so I’m proud of him. But Auburn had a historic year. We were picked in the middle of the league, we were one game out of first in the regular season, we got hot late. The last game we lost, I think, was at Tennessee three weeks ago? Four weeks ago? I mean, this team has done so many great things and so I’m very proud of them. And like these guys said, these guys got along really, really well together. And they made history. This is the fourth different team at Auburn that has won a championship in seven years — two regular seasons, two tournaments. They represented Auburn really well.

How did losing Chad Baker-Mazara change the way Auburn matched up with Yale?: It was huge. They have a great defensive guard in Bez (Mbeng). Bez is a great defensive guard. The other guards are better offensively than they are defensively. Denver Jones had a really good offensive game, but we needed that other guard out there offensively. Denver was a little under the weather, he had to play through that and so he ended up playing more minutes under the weather. And Chris Moore to play more minutes and KD had to play more minutes. And so we just weren’t as deep or as fresh. I think they took a shot at Chad, they hit him and he retaliated. You can’t retaliate, but they hit him first.

On if he was given an explanation as to why Baker-Mazara’s foul was elevated from a flagrant 1 to a flagrant 2: I think, perhaps a couple of words, the fact that it was serious, maybe. Or intentional. You know, Chad lined him up and retaliated, so by book or if that’s the wording they use, it was a flagrant 2. But it had a huge impact on the game. And I think if he called it a flagrant 1… you know, it was a flagrant 1. He intentionally, it was excessive, it was… How many flagrant 2s are there in games versus flagrant 1s? That’d be a good discussion. Let’s just say of all the flagrants, in my experience, 90%, maybe, are 1s, 10% (2s). Tough to get here after all year long, I don’t even know if we had a flagrant 2 all year long.

On Johni Broome appearing injured at the end of the game: I don’t know. I don’t know. He got tangled up there pretty good there, didn’t he? But Johni had a great year. He carried this team, particularly the offensive end and improved tremendously defensively. We rely on him a great deal. He’s one of the best centers in all of college basketball as an All-American.

On Auburn’s offensive struggles in the final 10 minutes: We turned it over and I think that was probably the biggest takeaway. We did not get a ton of easy ones, we didn’t kinda run without the ball. We put the ball in Chad’s hands a lot late to make plays. And so we really, offensively, lost a huge breakdown guy for us. I would say it’s our turnovers. Yale played solid defensively. (August) Mohoney was 9-for-11 from the foul line and so he was on the ground a lot. So I’m going to be anxious to see what those… we just fouled them too much.

When did Pearl realize Yale wasn’t going to back down?: We didn’t expect them to go away ever, ever. Listen, this is not… It’s funny, I heard Jay Bilas say some things today. Give Yale credit for making those plays. This has nothing to do with us not taking them seriously. Nothing. They outplayed us in many categories, they made shots, they guarded us, they know how to fall, you know, they know how to get the whistle to blow. And the whistle blowed a lot. They went to the line 31 times. That’s a lot.

On what he told Chad Baker-Mazara after the ejection: We all have to be accountable for things. We recognize that. I visited with him at half time a little bit and he felt badly about it and wished he had a do-over. But you don’t punish… a lot of aspects of the game. Give Yale credit. They played great, played great defense, we turned the ball over too much. That’s not disguising the fact that we we missed one of our top players — he’s one of our top two or three players.

Do you think Auburn’s lack of experience in close games played a role in the result?: I don’t know. We missed a couple of free throws but we got a couple of offensive rebounds in a free throw set that played into our hands, got us to where we had a chance to win the game based on our, let’s say, offensive-set free-throw execution. So it’ll be interesting to see those last two shots with Johni on the ground and all the contact that was there.

What are the positives you take from this season?: I think that this was a team that our fans liked as much as any I’ve had in 10 years at Auburn. Like I would say the 2019 Final Four team, that was a special team, had a special run and certainly one of the great teams we’ve ever had and maybe the best team we’ve ever had at Auburn. I think that Walker Kessler and Jabari Smith’s year, where we were No. 1 in the country for about four weeks and won the regular season, didn’t finish great that year but that was a team I think our fans really enjoyed. Our fans love this team. They love their energy, they love their passion, they love their emotion, they love that they beat every team they were supposed to beat except for tonight.