Alabama Basketball Shows Improvement Across the Board in Road Win Over Kentucky

Losing at home with a point total lower than any game in nearly two years for a program is extremely difficult to overcome. But then following it with a road contest against a top-10 team seems like a practically impossible challenge.

Not for Alabama men’s basketball.

Alabama fell to Ole Miss 74-64 on Tuesday after committing a season-high in turnovers and a season-low in offensive rebounds, which overall culminated into what Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats called a “disgusting” performance.

On Saturday afternoon, Alabama left the Ole Miss loss in the past as the No. 4 Crimson Tide took down No. 8 Kentucky 102-97 at a hostile Rupp Arena in Lexington. It was the Wildcats’ first home loss of the season and Alabama’s first win against a top-10 Kentucky team since 2002––the very first year of life for a couple of Alabama players while the rest weren’t even born.

“Couldn’t be more proud of a group of guys after the poor showing on Tuesday [against Ole Miss] to kind of bounce back and play the way we did here today,” Oats said during the postgame press conference. “This is a really good team we beat. We gave up too many threes their way late, but up until we were up by nine or so at the end of the game, I thought we’d done a pretty good job outside of one stretch where we’d given up the five in the first half…Our defense certainly didn’t want to win the game for us, but our offense showed up a lot better than it did against Ole Miss on Tuesday. I thought our defense was pretty good for large stretches against a pretty good offensive team.”

A lot of times, the best way to overcome high mountainous odds in basketball is to get hot early. Alabama did exactly that as forward Grant Nelson led the way with 19 points in the first half. The 2023-24 Final Four team member didn’t have his best game against Ole Miss and took it to heart the past couple of days.

“Nelson came out ready to go at the beginning game,” Oats said. “He went 3-of-7 from the free-throw line on Tuesday night and he got in the gym and worked. We were able to make small corrections for his shot and give him some confidence by putting a bunch of work in. I think the last two days when he finished his individual workout, he went 90-of-102 (from the charity stripe) two days ago, and 91-of-100 yesterday. Got some confidence. He shot 90 percent in the game. He had 25 [points] and 11[rebounds], he was huge.”

In addition to Nelson, Oats commended the play in his opening statement of reigning SEC Player of the Week Mark Sears, who scored 24 points and tallied nine assists, three-time SEC Freshman of the Week Labaron Philon, who went 3-of-5 from deep after coming into the game struggling from that area, the effort on both ends from forward and Hard Hat winner Mouhamed Dioubate and the shooting performance from guard Chris Youngblood, who “had a coming out party” in the second half.

These five players, among others like center Clifford Omoruyi, played pivotal roles in the Tide’s improvements from the Ole Miss game. Alabama had 21 turnovers on Tuesday compared to Saturday’s 10. The Tide also grabbed 15 offensive rebounds against the Wildcats compared to four against Ole Miss. The ball movement was a key factor as well as Alabama dished 20 assists while it only had 11 on Tuesday.

Alabama’s shooting was also on point as it shot 45 percent from the field, including 38 percent from behind the arc.

But no stat stood out more than the numbers from the charity stripe. Alabama has struggled from the free-throw line recently and it’s made some games closer, or in the Ole Miss case further than they should’ve been. As Oats alluded to with Nelson, the Crimson Tide as a whole worked on free throws during practice and it paid off very well against the Wildcats.

Alabama went 29-of-34 from the line and was in the bonus around the midway point of the second half. The constant aggressiveness down low forced Kentucky to foul, which displayed a ton of effort––something the Tide lacked against Ole Miss.

“Sometimes you need a loss to learn some lessons,” Oats said. “I try to study Coach Saban and football, and even look at most of his championship teams, they took a loss early. Got them focused. I think that loss got us refocused.

“This was a completely different team than the one that played against Ole Miss. If we learn the lessons we need in that loss Tuesday and we don’t forget them for the remainder of the year, it may be the best thing to happen to us. We just gotta make sure this is not a one-game deal. We’ve got to continue to do the things we’ve done since Tuesday night.”