Alabama head basketball coach Nate Oats was complimenting Auburn wing Chad Baker-Mazara on Friday ahead of a historic Iron Bowl of Basketball, but it all turned out to be back-handed.
Oats was lauding CBM's game, but eventually, the Crimson Tide coach threw Baker-Mazara under the bed for being ejected from the Tigers' Round of 64 March Madness matchup against Yale and being the reason Auburn lost.
“[Chad] Baker-Mazara is a very good player. He makes tough shots, can make big-time, electric plays, but they got beat in the first round by Yale without him because he got tossed early in the game," Oats said, per The Next Round Live.
That was deliberate. And it was the perfect tactic to get under CBM's skin.
Baker-Mazara has a famously short fuse. OutKick's Mark Harris called Baker-Mazara's displays "weird" and "over-the-top" in a scathing rebuke of the fiery swingman.
"In order to be a great athlete, you have to have an immeasurable amount of confidence. Some of those athletes are the quiet-confident type, while others wear their emotions on their sleeve. Then there is Auburn guard Chad Baker-Mazara, who oozes confidence out of every pore of his body," Harris wrote.
"There is a fine line between looking confident and coming across as arrogant, and Baker-Mazara crossed that line so long ago he can't even see it anymore.
"(The Oklahoma incident was) Weird, over-the-top behavior, but it gets even weirder when you consider that Baker-Mazara is a 25-year-old ‘grown’ man. You could expect this type of stuff from a young player, but this man has been able to legally buy alcohol for four full years."
It'll be tough not to be fazed by the scenes at Coleman Coliseum on Saturday. But if CBM could avoid the noise, he can help Auburn pull off the upset in the SEC's first-ever No. 1-No. 2 matchup.