Alabama Basketball: Tide still has time to improve and it must

Alabama Basketball must do more than winning an SEC regular-season Championship. Doing more requires late-season improvement.

Alabama basketball fans have enjoyed this season immensely. The progress Nate Oats has made in just his second Crimson Tide season is amazing. To continue that progress into the post-season, the Crimson Tide must improve or else it will not reach expectations.

The Crimson Tide should have beaten Arkansas Wednesday night. There are two primary reasons why the better team on the season, was not the better team in that game. One is beyond the control of players and coaches. The disparity in foul calls changed the game, taking away a rhythm important to Crimson Tide success. But if the fouls called and free throws attempted had been even, the Crimson Tide might not have won.

Arkansas was poor at the line, making 63 percent. The Tide made 38 percent of its foul shots. There were 51 free throws in the game. The Hogs were plus-24 in free-throw points. The Tide made one more field goal than the Hogs and did not shoot as well at 38 percent compared to 46 percent for the Razorbacks. Was the Hogs’ defense better than the Tide or did the Hogs take better shots?

A relatively new group providing college basketball analytics is Shot Quality. Check out their analysis of the game in the tweet below.

Their data shows, based on shot selection (actual shots taken), the Crimson Tide had only a 26 percent chance to win against Arkansas. Questionable shot selection did not suddenly appear in Fayetteville, AR. The Alabama basketball team has too often not shown the ability to distinguish between ‘a  shot opportunity’ and a ‘good shot opportunity.’ Most of the problem comes from attempting too-hard shots around the rim.

The result of the extra rim misses compared to top teams can be seen in the detailed data provided by Hoop-Math. Alabama Basketball coverts rim attempts at 56.3 percent. Check out below the list of top teams better at rim conversions. Going into the Arkansas game, the Tide was at 56.8 percent; No. 264 among Division One teams.

• Gonzaga – 73.8 percent
• Michigan – 71.2 percent
• Baylor – 69 percent
• Houston – 65.6 percent
• Illinois – 65.5 percent
• Villanova – 63.8 percent
• Iowa – 61.8 percent

These teams do not spread the floor as does the Tide in Nate Oats, five-out offense. Their inside-game threats are physically better suited to finishing around the rim than the Tide’s bigs. The Crimson Tide counters with a pace that leads to more shot attempts and by making threes.

Except the Tide’s three-ball success has dipped. Because of struggles in recent weeks, the Tide’s three-point shooting has dropped to 35.9 percent, ranked No. 78.

Some combination of better finishing at the rim and making more threes is required to beat top teams. The Tide’s normally very effective defense is not enough. Nate Oats is not sugar-coating the situation. He said other than the contributions from the recently injured players, Juwan Gary and Jordan Bruner, there were no positives for the Crimson Tide against Arkansas.

After the Vandy game, Nate Oats said if the Tide did not play better against Arkansas it would lose. Now he says if the Tide does not play harder against Mississippi State, another loss will be the result. The Alabama basketball team needs to take note.