SPOKANE, Wash. — They took ice baths and had a team meal at the hotel.
Those wild and crazy Yale Bulldogs. Just off the hinges after upsetting Auburn in the NCAA Tournament.
“We’re trying to stay level-headed and understand that San Diego State is a really good team,” junior guard Ben Mbeng said Saturday, “but so are we.”
In all seriousness: Of course this was going to be the case. In the locker room at Spokane Arena late Friday afternoon, the messaging already was firm: Awesome moment. Probably the best of their basketball lives. And there is more work to do, starting with the Aztecs in the round of 32 on Sunday.
James Jones, in fact, prepared for this before it happened. He thought he was a little too emotional after Yale upset Baylor in the 2016 NCAA Tournament — jumping on to the players huddled up in the locker room, celebrating with water bottles being splashed about — and it created an energy letdown in the second-round game against Duke. The keel, this time, had to stay even.
“I thought we got a little too high,” Jones said Saturday, thinking back to ’16. “If we had a better understanding of what we needed to do and were calmer, we would’ve had a better chance at winning that game.”
It helps that sheer belief is a ballast. Yale thinks it’s good. Yale thinks it can be a Sweet 16 team. Yale therefore wants to treat the opportunity ahead with a strictly business approach. Everybody else can do the celebrating for now.
“This past week has been a whirlwind of emotions,” senior guard August Mahoney said Saturday. “A lot of unexpected things have come to all of us, but I think it’s important to note that we all believe that we belong here…Yesterday is over and tomorrow is a new day. I think we’re all focused and locked in on the task at hand now.”