‘Stop messing with my son’: Auburn’s Bruce Pearl goes on fiery rant defending Chad Baker-Mazara

Auburn head basketball coach Bruce Pearl still thinks the flagrant 2 that was called against Chad Baker-Mazara in the opening three minutes of the Tigers’ NCAA Tournament-opening game against Yale should’ve been called a flagrant 1.

“Could it have been a flagrant 2? Yes, it could have been,” Pearl said in a press conference Thursday. “But three minutes into the game when there really wasn’t anything where we were having any problems on the floor with temperatures rising or things like that. I knew right there we were in trouble.”

Baker-Mazara was whistled for the foul after throwing an elbow into Yale’s August Mahoney as the two ran up the floor together in the first half — an act Pearl says was retaliatory after Baker-Mazara was hit the play prior.

“I thought the fact that it was retaliatory, that five seconds earlier Chad-Baker got hit in the throat on a flagrant play that was missed, should have been taken into consideration,” Pearl said. “I just thought the finality of, you work all year long to put yourself in that position and then on a judgment call remove him from the game. I just thought it was too excessive.”

Auburn went on to lose to Yale 78-76 — a game that Pearl went on to describe as “one of the most disappointing losses” in his career.

While Pearl maintains Baker-Mazara’s early ejection played a role in the game’s result, he recognizes there were “a lot of the mistakes and some of the stuff that reared their ugly head have happened over a period of time and were just kind of the sum of a perfect storm.”

However, that’s not what’s been talked about since the game’s end.

Instead, Baker-Mazara’s ejection has continued to be a hot topic — for better or for worse.

And on Thursday, Pearl offered a fiery response to those who continue to give Baker-Mazara grief on social media.

“I’m just going to tell the Auburn family, while I know you’re disappointed, if somebody was messing with your son, you’d stand up for your son a little bit, wouldn’t you? Stop messing with my son,” Pearl said. “Stop it. He apologized. He made a mistake. And I’m calling you out. I’m not having it.”

Since the incident, Baker-Mazara has apologized, Pearl said — echoing the comments his son and associate head coach Steven Pearl said Tuesday.

“At the same time, on the other side of the coin, we’re handling that with total accountability. Chad made a mistake. He should have never done it. He should have walked away. There were several times during the course of the season where he made the same mistake,” Pearl said.

“What a really difficult way to learn from that mistake. At the same time, I would also like to remind our fans and anybody listening that Chad owned up to that mistake. And he’s apologized for that mistake. And he’s taken responsibility for it, although the consequences were really, really significant. And he feels really bad. He’s struggling with that right now.”