NATIONAL CHAMPS: Inside the build by the Auburn men's wheelchair basketball team on the way to this year's title
Here's how the Auburn men's wheelchair basketball team grew from the ground up over the last 10 years to winning last Saturday's national championship game.
As the final seconds ticked down, the Tigers threw their hands in the air, victorious.
Then they reached their arms out — to find a teammate to embrace.
The Auburn men’s wheelchair basketball team won its first national championship in program history on Saturday in Arizona, the second-seeded Tigers upsetting top-seeded Alabama in a storybook finish to the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s collegiate division national tournament.
Auburn won 70-59. Drew Beutel scored a team-high 23 points for the Tigers and dished six assists. Jake Eastwood scored 19 points, dished six assists and picked up three steals. Jude Hiley scored 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting from the field, and pulled down six rebounds.
Hiley was named MVP of the championship game.
Auburn at the national tournament, hosted by the University of Arizona, topped Wisconsin-Whitewater in the quarterfinals and beat Southwest Minnesota State in the semifinals. The top-seeded Tide waited in the finals — and Auburn and Alabama had split their rival game 3-3 in six games in the regular season.
“It was about midway through the second quarter that we decided to go up in a full-court press, and we pressed them for the remainder of the game,” Auburn head coach Robb Taylor said this week, recounting the win. “They didn’t trust their bench to go in and run against us, and our guys were faster, they were quicker, they just seemed more conditioned — and they stepped up when they needed to.”
Auburn trailed by as many as eight in the first quarter before cutting the deficit to one point by halftime — and in the second half the Tigers took over.
“It’s great to be an Auburn Tiger,” the fans chanted in the final seconds of the win at the McKale Center in Tuscon. Players from the bench rolled onto the court as the clock when the final buzzer sounded, hugging and embracing each other in celebration.
“It was incredible. The amount of work that all of the guys have put in all year to get to that point was just great,” Taylor said. “Of course, they had to make it a little tough on me at the end when we missed a number of free throws in the last minute of the game — but, fortunately, our defense played so great that Alabama wasn’t able to get a whole lot of clean looks off. As soon as the clock hit zero, everything just kind of slowed down a little bit. Everyone was all over the place and celebrating.
“It was just incredible for our program to go through that whole game and then being able to celebrate at the end with the guys was awesome.”
As for Taylor, when the buzzer sounded he turned to find assistant coach Zach Dickey and give him a hug. Dickey was one of Taylor’s athletes early on when he first got to Auburn some 10 years ago to start the wheelchair basketball program, and he’s been with him through the whole build from starting a program from scratch to national championship winner.
Here’s how they did it: