Auburn basketball associate head coach Steven Pearl believes the Tigers were the better team in Friday’s first-round matchup against the Yale Bulldogs.

He especially believes that to be true had Auburn not been without junior guard Chad Baker-Mazara for the majority of the game.

“We beat Yale by 20 points if Chad (Baker-Mazara) is in that game,” Pearl said Tuesday morning in an appearance with The Next Round. “I don’t want to dance around that. I’m not trying to, obviously, disrespect Yale, but we’re way better than they are and we should’ve beat them without him.”

However, none of that ended up being the case after Baker-Mazara was ejected after just three minutes of play in Auburn’s NCAA Tournament opener against Yale — a game that ultimately ended Auburn’s season as Yale went on to win 78-76.

Baker-Mazara’s ejection was the result of him being whistled for a Flagrant 2 foul after elbowing Yale guard August Mahoney in a play that Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl said was an act of retaliation as Baker-Mazara was hit near the neck moments earlier.

On Tuesday morning, Steven Pearl echoed those comments.

“It’s incredibly frustrating, you look at the incident and if they look at the possession before, Chad gets hit in the throat on the way down. Whether it was incidental or not, it was contact close to the neck and face, which is why he retaliated,” Steven Pearl said. “He shouldn’t have retaliated though. Chad’s old enough and smart enough to know, especially how he’s been targeted this year, that that’s going to happen and he’s got to keep his cool.”

Since Auburn’s loss — which Bruce Pearl called one of the “most disappointing losses” in his career — there has been plenty of discourse surrounding the situation with fans and even rival basketball coaches weighing in on the situation.

And according to Steven Pearl, no one regrets the action more the Baker-Mazara.

“No one feels worse about what happened than Chad Baker,” Steven Pearl said. “The kid was in absolute tears for three days following the game.”

Once the Tigers returned to Auburn from Spokane, Washington, players and coaches immediately met individually. And according to Steven Pearl, one of the questions was about Baker-Mazara and how he was doing since getting home.

“They’re like, ‘He’s apologized to us like six or seven times, separately, on different occasions,’” Steven Pearl said, echoing some of the answers from Auburn’s players. “Just because he feels so bad.”

Losing Baker-Mazara in the opening minutes of Friday’s game against Yale proved critical. And anyone who paid attention to Auburn’s season up to that point knew it likely would be.

Coming into the game, Baker-Mazara was averaging more than 20 minutes of play time, more than 10 points per game and more than three rebounds per game.

“We don’t win 27 games, we don’t win an SEC Championship without Chad,” Steven Pearl said Tuesday. “He’s that big of a piece to our team.”

In a more pointed quip, Steven Pearl also had a message to those being harshly critical of the junior guard.

“If there are Auburn fans that are hating on Chad and have that strong of an opinion, just don’t watch us anymore because Chad Baker is an unbelievable young man and we love him to death,” Steven Pearl said. “And obviously we want him to be a big part of our program moving forward.”