Three Things to Remember After Alabama Basketball’s Tense Victory Over LSU
The Alabama and LSU men’s basketball programs came into SEC play with the same record, but they’ve each had very different results when facing indisputably the nation’s best conference this season. Nevertheless, that didn’t matter in this one as the game was close from start to finish.
There’s so much to dissect from this matchup at Coleman Coliseum. Here are three takeaways:
No Sears, No Problem for Alabama Backcourt
There’s no doubt about it. Alabama may have won a game against one of its biggest rivals, but the benching of Preseason All-American guard Mark Sears for the entire second half was the main story from Saturday night’s win. Sears played 17 minutes in the first half but was held scoreless, missing all five of his field goal attempts, but added three assists, three rebounds and two turnovers.
For a large majority of the second half, Sears had a towel around his shoulders and often covered his mouth with it while talking to numerous assistant coaches and teammates. He appeared to have a look of frustration throughout his time on the bench as well. The ESPN broadcast said that he wasn’t injured, which added to the mystery.
“I’ll just say this, and I’m not going to talk anymore about playing time stuff, we went with the guys in the second half that thought gave us the best chance to win this game, and we won the game,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said during the postgame press conference. “And we haven’t done that very often this year. So that’s all I’m going to say about that.”
As the final score states, Alabama got the job done without Sears in the second half. This was much in part due to the Crimson Tide’s depth at guard with Aden Holloway and Chris Youngblood, who led the team in scoring with 19 and 14 points respectively.
“At first, my family thought I was gonna be mad about not starting, but I was like, man, this team is wonderful,” Youngblood said. “I just embrace this come-off-the-bench role with my boy Biz [Holloway], but they put me in the starting lineup, so I don’t get to come off the bench with him no more. But, you know, it was fun.”
That starting spot had previously been occupied by freshman guard Labaron Philon, who scored 11 points off the bench Saturday and is still seeking to fully emerge from some recent struggles, including a game on Jan. 14 in which he didn’t hit on a field goal attempt. He was also dealing with a minor ankle tweak and did not practice Friday.
A Tale of Two Halves for the Crimson Tide Frontcourt
“LSU is capable of beating us at home. They’ve out-rebounded teams frequently enough and we’ve had an issue with some rebounding at times this year. They’ve gotten to the free-throw line, I think they’re 10-0 when they’ve shot more free throws than their opponents. We have to be able to guard without fouling––we’ve had an issue with that. So some stuff we’ve had issues with they do well.”
This was an excerpt of the answer that Oats gave when asked why LSU shouldn’t be overlooked during Friday’s press conference. Fast forward to the midway point of Saturday’s game, he was correct to be worried about these Tiger tendencies.
The easiest stat to paint the picture would be that Alabama had 17 total rebounds at halftime and LSU forward Corey Chest had 15 at that point with an unheard nine offensive rebounds. Chest, among others, bruised Alabama down low before the break with a whopping 13 offensive rebounds which led to 10 second-chance points.
Alabama forwards and bigs Clifford Omoruyi, Grant Nelson, Jarin Stevenson and Mouhamed Dioubate were practically silenced in the first half, which was a major reason for a 1-4 team in conference play being tied at 40 with a 5-1 program.
But a switch flipped in the Crimson Tide’s favor during the second half as LSU only had four offensive rebounds and four second-chance points in the latter 20 minutes. Dioubate finished with 14 points while Nelson had 12 and Omoruyi scored eight with four offensive rebounds (nine total).
“Cliff, I didn’t think he was bringing it [in the first half],” Oats said. “They had a kid with 15 rebounds. Cliff was not rebounding like he needed to, wasn’t playing as hard as we would’ve liked and he ends up going on playing extremely hard in the second half. He had a great attitude on the bench and ends up winning the Hard Hat after not starting the second half. So I kind of just told the guys that’s how life goes sometimes––there’s a little adversity and you gotta challenge it well. I was super proud of the way Cliff handled it.
“You look at Dioubate, I didn’t think he was his normal self in the first half. I thought it was better in the second half. I thought Jarin Stevenson, like I said, the guy only scored three points and had three rebounds, but he’s locked into the defense and ends up with three steals and plus-16. I thought Jarin’s effort was pretty good…I thought he was pretty good guarding people. And Grant, I mean, Grant’s been pretty solid all year, to be honest. That three he hit was big, the free throws were big.”
Richard Hendrix was the last Alabama player to put up 20 rebounds in a game and he did in 2007. Chest had 15 in the first half but only three in the second, none of which came on the offensive glass.
Defense Won the Game for Alabama
While Alabama’s offense was relatively linear throughout, the Crimson Tide’s defense was jolted out of bed with a different tenacity. These efforts led to LSU finishing the game shooting 39.4 percent from the field, including a rough 3-for-23 performance from behind the arc. Of course, some of these shots were uncontested but Alabama overall did a very solid job defending the perimeter.
Alabama could’ve defended better down low as LSU guards Jordan Sears and Cam Carter’s 38 combined points were often scored in the paint. The Tigers finished the game with 40 points in the paint––22 in the first half and 18 in the second.
“I thought we did a pretty good job defensively in the second half,” Oats first said in his opening statement. “We gave up 1.11 [points per possession] in the first half and then held them to 0.83 in the second half. So we’ve been challenging these guys. I didn’t think our second-half defense had been very good lately, so we made the point to the guys, we’re done starting the same group that starts the game.
“We’re going to start the guys that we think give us the best chance to get a great start in the second half. So we subbed in two guys in the starting lineup––kind of looked at some leverage numbers, plus-minus numbers and kind of challenged a couple of guys. I couldn’t be more proud of our guys in the second half.”
The Crimson Tide swiped the ball away from the Tigers a good amount over the course of the game as it logged 10 steals. Stevenson led the way with three, Holloway had two and everyone but Sears and Nelson recorded one. Alabama only had two blocks on the night, but both of which came from Youngblood.
“Our defense essentially won the game,” Oats said. “I mean, our offense was good enough to win, but our defense won us this game.”
