A few major red flags just went up for Alabama heading into the SEC Tournament

Alabama has the inside-track to the No. 2 seed in the SEC Tournament. However, in a conference that will produce anywhere from 9-11 NCAA Tournament teams, Tuesday night’s 98-88 loss to Georgia revealed just how vulnerable the Tide might be in Nashville next week. 

Alabama has a serious lack of depth in its front court, and Georgia fully exposed that weakness on Tuesday. The Bulldogs held the Tide to just 18 points in the paint, the second fewest paint points they’ve had in a game this year (per CBBanalytics.com). On the other end, though, Georgia’s edge was even more pronounced. 

Georgia’s interior dominance vs. Alabama makes it hard to trust the Tide in March

For the season, Georgia averages 14.1 second-chance points per game and is one of the better offensive rebounding teams in the country with a 35.4 percent offensive rebound rate. That made Mike White’s Bulldogs a particularly bad matchup for Alabama, but even so, Alabama’s performance is troublesome. 

The Tide allowed Georgia to grab 13 offensive rebounds and, worse, allowed the Bulldogs to convert them into 25 second-chance points. That’s the second-most Alabama has allowed all season, equalling the early-season loss to Gonzaga, and Saturday’s two-point win over Tennessee. Alabama also allowed 40 points in the paint for the second consecutive game. 

Because of the pace that Nate Oats wants his team to play at and all the extra possessions that pace creates, Alabama is going to give up more points in just about every statistical category than most teams. They also score more. So, what’s more instructive are the ‘rate’ stats rather than the ‘raw’ numbers, and those tell an equally damning story. 

On Tuesday night, 25.5 percent of Georgia’s points came on second-chance opportunities, which is 94th percentile for a single-game in college basketball this year. Only 40 percent of Georgia’s points came in the paint, which is 43rd percentile, but the Bulldogs shot a ridiculous 68.2 percent at the rim and 71.4 percent in the paint. 

Alabama's lack of size will be its undoing in March

Beyond a lack of true bigs in the front court, Alabama doesn’t have great positional size, and that’s going to hurt in March against teams with big physical wings and oversized guards who can punish Labaron Philon, Aden Holloway, and Latrell Wrightsell Jr. defensively and on the boards. 

However, Nate Oats’ teams are rarely built around a strong defensive identity. They’re built to score. So, potentially, the bigger problem for Alabama this March will be the inability to put pressure on the rim with a reliable lob-threat. 65.6 percent of Alabama’s shots vs. Georgia came from beyond the arc. Even for Oats, that’s a lot; an 11 percent increase from their season-long average. 

The Tide entered Tuesday night riding an eight-game win streak, so those issues were easy to dismiss, but now, they’re huge red flags that are impossible to ignore.