Tigers take men’s wheelchair basketball title, Alabama rolls to women’s
Auburn University’s Jude Hiley hadn’t hit a 3-pointer all National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA) Intercollegiate Tournament.
But with the hot hand he was having late in fourth quarter, the junior was hungry to take out the team’s biggest rival Saturday afternoon in the NWBA Intercollegiate Tournament men’s wheelchair basketball championship game.
So, with just under two and a half minutes to play and his team leading by five points late, Hiley surprisingly launched one from the top right of the key and buried it to give the Tigers just enough cushion for good.
Drew Beutel scored a game-high 25 points and had five rebounds, while Jake Eastwood had 21 points and 10 rebounds, and Hiley scored 15 points and had seven rebounds to lead the No. 2-seeded Auburn Tigers to a 70-59 win over No. 1-ranked University of Alabama at the McKale Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz.
“Oh, coach [Robb Taylor] really didn’t like that one. I was thinking all tournament. I hadn’t hit one all tournament. I’m thinking law of averages. I gotta hit one eventually. So, I just put it up. I didn’t really think much. Just put it up and it went in,” says Hiley, who was named the championship game MVP. “I don’t know if you want to call that the dagger, but it maybe helped a little bit.”
It marked Auburn’s first men’s intercollegiate wheelchair basketball title since the program started in 2010. And the trio of Tigers helped cement it.
Beutel had the hot hand in the first half, scoring 19 points over the opening two quarters to give the Tigers a 35-34 lead at the half. Eastwood came alive in the third quarter, scoring 12 of his 21 points in the period to give Auburn a 52-46 advantage after three quarters.
And then Hiley turned it on in the fourth, scoring 11 points with less than five minutes to go in the period.
His 3-pointer put Auburn up 63-55 with 2 minutes and 21 seconds left in the game. And the Tigers held on, despite some shaky late-game free-throw shooting — going 5-of-16 from the foul line inside the final 1:40.
“Jude is a difference-maker. So, being able to put him back out on the floor, he plays with confidence and everything that he does. So, yes, there might be some shots that I question. He never questions anything, and he’s got full belief in himself. And it paid off this whole tournament,” Taylor says. “He played great for us all weekend. That’s why he was named MVP.”
Trailing by 11 with 1:17 to go, Alabama cut the deficit down to 66-59 with 54 seconds remaining after back-to-back baskets by Joshua Hipps. But that’s as close as the Crimson Tide could claw back.
Justyn Newman led Alabama with 20 points and nine rebounds, while Preston Howell added 14 points and four rebounds and Hipps added 10 points. Eric Francis had six points and four rebounds, while Timothy Houston had six points and three rebounds, Jason Foster had three points, and Kaden Bagley (three rebounds) also contributed.
Gavin Peterson (five points and two rebounds), Adam Smith (four points and three rebounds) and Jay Denning (one rebound) contributed for Auburn.
Hiley says he’s a third-generation Auburn student, with his parents, Patrick and Gretchen, and grandparents, David and Angela, having attended. He says he was just ready to play against Alabama.
“Oh, I just came out, and I was ready to shoot it,” Hiley says. “I mean, coach might not love all the shots I take, but I’ve been in plenty of empty gyms taking these shots. So, I just feel confident in taking my shots and getting my spots.”
Gonzalez Helps Crimson Tide Roll To Sixth Straight Intercollegiate Title
Ixhelt Gonzalez produced a tide-turning fourth-quarter run, both figuratively and literally.
And that helped lift the University of Alabama women’s wheelchair basketball team to its sixth straight title Saturday afternoon in Tucson, Ariz.
Gonzalez scored 10 of her game-high 24 points in the fourth quarter to help push No. 1-seeded Crimson Tide to a 55-37 win in the NWBA Women’s Intercollegiate Division wheelchair basketball championship game over No. 2-seeded University of Texas-Arlington at the McKale Center at the University of Arizona.
With Alabama up 34-30 entering the fourth quarter, the Crimson Tide turned to the two-time U.S. Paralympian. Over a four-minute and 15-second stretch, she went on a double-digit run all by herself, giving the Rolling Tide an insurmountable lead.
Alabama women’s wheelchair basketball coach Ryan Hines says Gonzalez is always aggressive, and it carried into the fourth quarter.
“She’s the best player in the country, right? She won that award this year and she showed it in that game,” Hines says. “We had a team effort though — like, we had five people on the court, but we had everybody else on the bench engaged the whole time. We knew if we just kept that aggressive mindset on defense, things were going to turn for us. And it happened in the third, happened really in the fourth quarter.”
Gonzalez started the run hitting a basket to put Alabama up 36-30 with 7:28 remaining. Then, off the inbounds pass, championship game MVP Joy Haizelden (12 points and one rebound) made a key steal and shot a pass to Gonzalez, who scored on a short layup to push the lead to 38-30 with 7:13 remaining. Gonzalez added a basket from the top left of the free-throw line with 5:51 left, another hoop with 5:22 to go and made two free throws at the 4:13 mark to push the lead to 46-32 with 3:14 left in the game.
“When Joy got that steal, the second steal and she passed it to me, I was like, ‘Well, it’s written right now,’” says Gonzalez, who also had 12 rebounds. “So, I was very confident at that point with my teammates being super, super aggressive and not trying to lay low, even though we were, you know, loading up on our fouls, really.”
Two-time U.S. Paralympian Bailey Moody added nine points and 13 rebounds for Alabama, while Loeiza Vari Le Roux added four points and three rebounds, and U.S. Paralympian Abigail Bauleke had three points and six rebounds. Lisa Clary-Galibert (one point and one rebound),
Skylar Scarnecchia (one point and one rebound) and Jian Jackson (one point) also contributed.
Denise Rodriguez led the University of Texas-Arlington with 10 points and had two rebounds, while U.S. Paralympian Zoe Voris had nine points and nine rebounds and Harmonee Ruetes added six points and 11 rebounds. Quinn Meyer (four points and seven rebounds), Brittany Yeomans (four points and two rebounds) and Laura Davoli (two points) also contributed.
The University of Texas-Arlington reached the title game after upsetting 2025 champ and No. 3-seeded University of Arizona, 78-55, in Friday’s semifinals, while the University of Alabama defeated No. 4-seeded University of Illinois, 61-49.
Gonzalez says their title run has been focused on one word — family.
“Family is the biggest thing. First and foremost, right? We’re such a family. We’re so together,” she says. “And when things go south, we stay together. When things go good, we stay together. It doesn’t matter what’s going on. We’re together. We’re a family. That’s the biggest thing in our culture.”