Alabama Basketball: Stumbling Bulldogs try to stop Tide ‘Roll’

Alabama Basketball: The Tide looks to make it nine straight wins but the Bulldogs will be seeking a road SEC upset.

The Alabama basketball team is on fire, fresh off its most impressive win of the season, Tuesday night in Baton Rouge. Games are so frequent in college basketball and upsets are not infrequent, the term ‘trap game’ does not much apply. To the extent it is a fair description, Alabama Basketball has two of them between LSU and the next big test against Oklahoma, in Norman.

Against Mississippi State Saturday and Kentucky Tuesday, the Crimson Tide will be solid favorites. The Clarion Ledger describes the Crimson Tide as a “heavy favorite” Saturday. The Warren Nolan algorithm predicts a 12-point Alabama basketball win. Based on the ESPN Power Index, the Bulldogs have only a 21 percent chance to win.

Nate Oats’ team is not on a parallel to Nick Saban’s recent National Champions, but there is a similarity for Saturday night. The Crimson Tide could lose to Mississippi State but it would mostly have to do it to itself. It will not take a repeat of the Crimson Tide offensive explosion against LSU to beat the Bulldogs. Playing hard, smart and tough should get the win.

The Bulldogs are led by a coach who knows the necessity of tough play. In 25 head coaching seasons, Ben Howland has won at every stop. He took three UCLA teams to the Final Four. The only negative in his coaching career has been questionable complaints he was too tough on some UCLA players. No such claim has been made in his six Mississippi State seasons.

Any toughness problem for the Bulldogs can be attributed to Bulldog players. While Bama was running LSU out of its own gym, the Bulldogs were losing at home to rival, Ole Miss. After the loss, a Bulldog took the blame for himself and his teammates.

"They really just came out and played harder than us. Our energy wasn’t there from the start and got us down in the first half."

The Bulldogs were a solid favorite and lost 64-46. They can be expected to remedy their effort problem Saturday night. Effort alone will not be enough. The Bulldogs have some talent, but the three best players are sophomores. Two of them, D.J. Stewart and Iverson Molinar are No. 4 and No. 5 in the SEC in scoring average. The third, 6-feet-10, 245 pounds, Tolu Smith leads the SEC in rebounding.

Statistically, Molinar leads the SEC in three-point percentage (51.4) but he only averages taking three per game. As a team, the Bulldogs lead the SEC in three-point percentage (37.2), but they take less than half as many shots as the Tide, from outside the arc. The Bulldogs are No. 11 in the league in scoring average at 71.7 points per game.

Two home wins over the next few days and the Crimson Tide win streak gets pushed to ten. Then it is off to Oklahoma.