San Diego State will try to reach the Sweet 16 for the fourth time in the last 13 NCAA men's basketball tournaments when it faces Yale in a second-round East Region game Sunday evening in Spokane, Washington.
The fifth-seeded Aztecs' hopes of advancing to the Sweet 16 -- and beyond -- appeared to become much easier Friday when the 13th-seeded Bulldogs upset fourth-seeded Auburn, becoming the second-lowest seed to win in the 2024 tournament. Oakland, the 14th seed in the South Region, defeated third-seeded Kentucky, 80-76, Thursday.
Oddsmakers have made San Diego State a 5 1/2-point favorite. ESPN Analytics gives the Aztecs a 68.2% chance of winning.
All five Yale starters average in double figures, topped by 7-foot sophomore center Danny Wolf, who is averaging 14.3 points per game.
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"They're dangerous at every level," San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher said at a news conference Saturday. "That's what makes it a challenge. It's who can you help off and how committed are you to help? They make that challenging every time they step on the floor.
"They've got dynamic shooters. They have guys that can score with their backs to the basket. They have guys that can attack downhill to the basket. So they score at every level. They're really good offensively, so it will be a real challenge for our half-court defense to be at its best."
By comparison, San Diego State has two players averaging in double figures, senior forward Jaedon LeDee, who is averaging 21.4 points, and junior guard Reese Walters, who is averaging 10.0, while two others average 9.4, Lamont Butler and Micah Parrish, both senior guards.
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What the Bulldogs do best statistically is avoid turnovers. Yale is averaging 9.5 turnovers per game, tied for 11th fewest among Division I teams.
The Bulldogs (23-9) are the 52nd overall seed in the 68-team field. The Aztecs (25-10) were seeded 18th.
Yale qualified for the tournament for the second time in three years and seventh time overall by winning the four-team Ivy League Tournament as the second seed, defeating fourth-seeded Brown, 62-61, overcoming a six-point deficit with 23 seconds to play.
Yale is the only school in the tournament that doesn't offer athletic scholarships, although the players can receive financial assistance from the university. No Ivy League schools offer athletic scholarships, meaning Yale's athletes go through the same admission process as other students.
Yale's roster includes two players from San Diego County -- junior guard Yassine Gharram and sophomore guard Devon Arlington.
Gharram is a 6-foot-3 junior guard averaging 2.6 points in 14.1 minutes per game and has played in all 32 games. He scored seven points against Auburn, one off his season high.
Gharram averaged 19.5 points in his career at Foothills Christian High School in El Cajon, was a four-time All-Coastal League selection and helped lead the Knights to four league championships.
Arlington is a 6-foot-3 sophomore guard, averaging 1.6 points and 22 minutes in seven games. Arlington is San Marcos High School's career scoring leader with 2,035 points and a two-time Palomar League Player of the Year.
"There's nothing about San Diego that's different than most places in the country for us. We just have to go places and turn over some rocks to try to find kids that are good enough academically and athletically to play for us," Bulldogs coach James Jones said.
"Fortunately, for us we found two really good players in the city of San Diego. Yassine and Devon are both tremendous young men. Devon ... hasn't had a great opportunity yet, but his opportunity is coming.
"Yassine has done a tremendous job for us. I've listened to every game we've played and a lot of the commentators talk about he could start on a lot of other teams, he just happens to be behind a kid that's the best defensive player in the league (Bez Mbeng, selected as the Ivy League's Defensive Player of the Year the past two seasons).
"So really good players, really good young men, and they happen to live in one of the nicest places in the country," Jones said. "So that's one reason to go recruit there, because it's the nicest place on the planet."
The 6:40 p.m. game will be televised by TBS. The San Diego State-Yale winner will face the winner of Sunday's second-round game between top-seeded Connecticut and ninth-seeded Northwestern. That game will be played Thursday in an East Region semifinal in Boston.
A Connecticut-San Diego State game would be a rematch of last season's NCAA championship game, which the Huskies won, 76-59.
For the second consecutive game, the University of Idaho's band will fill in for the Yale band, including wearing Yale apparel.
Because Yale is on spring break, many of the band members were away and not able to make the trip to Spokane, so the university made arrangements with Idaho, an athletic department spokesman told City News Service.
"I remember we were on the bench prior because in our shootaround we didn't have a band, we just had our cheer team that flew with us," Wolf said. "I remember looking to my coaches and being very confused as to how we had a band all wearing extremely interesting Yale-branded gear.
"But for the University of Idaho to be gracious enough to come here and be able to play our fight song to the best of their ability, I just appreciate that."
