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A college basketball team’s road game victory almost wasn’t as players appeared to make light of some sky high troubles that forced them to turn around.

“The threat level is contained for the moment…clothes were ripped.”

Ahead of Saturday’s game against the University of Houston, Auburn University’s Tigers were en route to William P. Hobby Airport when the pilot notified air traffic control of a problem. According to a report from CBS Sports, an incident involving forwards Ja’Heim Hudson, a senior, and freshman Jahki Howard had prompted the chartered flight to turn around and request law enforcement to wait for their arrival.

Initially redirected to Montgomery, Alabama, audio between the pilot and ATC detailed how the pilot sought to head back to the team’s starting point, explaining, “We’d like to return back to Auburn if that’s at all possible.”

Before arriving back on the ground roughly 40 minutes after takeoff Friday, the scuffle had been relayed to ATC and the pilot later conveyed, “The fight has been contained. We’ve talked to the coach and then there’s a nurse on board. We’ve talked to them. So let’s just, let’s pull the captain on the ship.”

When he’d asked for the sheriff or police to be there when they landed, the pilot added, “The flight deck is secure. The threat level is contained for the moment, we just had — we’ll have police on the ground, and we had two players that got into a physical altercation, clothes were ripped.”

As a result of the behavior on board, both Hudson and Howard were barred from boarding the second flight to Houston, according to CBS Sports, where the team would go on to kickoff a season opening winning streak of two games in a row as they defeated the Cougars 74-69. It had yet to be reported whether they would face any further penalty for the in-flight altercation that caused the plane to turn around.

Upon securing their victory over the fourth-ranked Houston, a number of players from the ranked 11 Auburn could be seen running around the court with their arms out, appearing to pretend to be airplanes.

Meanwhile, after the men’s basketball team took to social media to share some images from the win, a pun, whether intended or not, spurred on others to steer it in that direction after Auburn wrote, “Houston… we have a problem.”

“That’s what the pilot of the Tigers charter plane said during the fight,” replied one user.

At the time of this report, Auburn University had informed CBS Sports that it would release a statement on the incident, but one was not readily available. Likewise, requests from WBRC for information or comment from the airport and local law enforcement had not been answered.

Kevin Haggerty
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