Alabama Basketball: Crimson Tide rolls over Rebels

Alabama basketball cruised to an 84-62 victory over Ole Miss on Tuesday night, leading by as much as 27 points in the game. With the win, Alabama improves to 12-2 and 2-0 in SEC play. The Crimson Tide finished with just seven turnovers and hit nine three-pointers at a 45 percent clip.

As it has been for most of the season, Alabama basketball was led by its stellar freshmen class.

Brandon Miller finished with 17 points and five rebounds, which isn’t a particularly impressive stat line by his standards. Miller made sure to make every one of those points look good.

He threw down a thunderous transition dunk off a lob pass from fellow freshman Rylan Griffen in the first half. He followed it up just a couple possessions later with another smooth transition bucket, euro-stepping a defender and finishing with a reverse layup on the left side of the basket.

Late in the second half, with the shot clock winding down, Miller pulled up from Mobile on the Alabama midcourt logo. He hit the deep three, fading to the side for good measure, to put an exclamation mark on the victory.

Freshman forward Noah Clowney added an efficient 10 points and eight rebounds, while freshman guard Jaden Bradley contributed 14 points and three assists.

Point guard Mark Sears was the most impressive of the upperclassmen. He posted 16 points and six rebounds, but recorded just one assist and accounted for three of the Tide’s turnovers.

Jahvon Quinerly started the new year off right with one of his best games of the season. In just 16 minutes of action, Quinerly hit 3-5 three-point shots, scoring 11 points and dishing out three assists. Dom Welch saw limited minutes, and continues to work back from injury.

Both Quinerly and Welch are slowly acclimating and will eventually find their niche on this team. With Nimari Burnett expected to return at some point in the SEC schedule as well, Alabama Basketball can expect to get deeper and much more flexible in the backcourt and on the wing.

Alabama Basketball takes the court again this Saturday, hosting the Kentucky Wildcats at noon central time. The Wildcats are always formidable, and will be coming off a hard-fought win over LSU. If Alabama play its game, the Crimson Tide will take care of business once again.