AUBURN | In a tight, close game against Auburn’s biggest rival, Chad Baker-Mazara could have made a difference.

Instead, he watched the final 16 minutes of the game from the locker room after earning a Flagrant-2 foul.

It comes nearly a year after Baker-Mazara was ejected early from Auburn’s opening round upset loss to Yale in the NCAA Tournament.

“This is his second time having it, and obviously we're not as good a team without him,” said AU coach Bruce Pearl, who added he didn’t see the infraction in real time.

“He takes a lot of contact. He gets hit a lot, and he can't – if it was some sort of retaliation, he just can't retaliate.”

Video replay clearly showed Baker-Mazara elbowing Alabama’s Chris Youngblood in the back of the head. With one of AU’s top playmakers sidelined, No. 7 Alabama was able to pull out a 93-91 overtime win against No. 1 Auburn in Neville Arena.

The technical foul, which came with 10:52 left in the second half, meant many of AU’s regulars had to play extra minutes. It showed in overtime with Alabama out-rebounding Auburn 7-3 including five offensive boards.

Of the Tide’s 14 overtime points, six came on second chances.

Auburn All-American Johni Broome played 43 minutes including 19 of 20 minutes in the second half and all five minutes of overtime.

“My message to Chad is to learn from his mistakes. Want to change, want to do better for the team and for himself,” said Broome, who finished with a career-high 34 points.

“We all love Chad, we still had the opportunity to win the game without Chad. Obviously he's down on himself, as well, because he'd rather be out there with us. The message to him is to try to learn from his mistakes.”

Baker-Mazara finished with seven points on 2 of 7 shooting.

Auburn finished the regular season 27-4 overall and 15-3 in the SEC, and will be the No. 1 seed in next week’s SEC Tournament.