Alabama Basketball cruised to a 90-69 win over Georgia Saturday afternoon. Shooting, rebounding, and defense propelled the Alabama Crimson Tide to its eighth SEC win and 19 wins overall. Ten Alabama players logged double-digit minutes in the Tide's sixth straight win.
Alabama's hot shooting from outside the arc continued with 11 made threes and a success rate of 42%. Georgia was as cold as Bama was hot. making only 17% of their 23 three-point attempts. Over the Crimson Tide shot 53% for the game to Georgia's 36%.
Alabama's defense had much to do with the Bulldogs' shooting problems. After the game, Nate Oats said, "Unbelievable effort from our guys. Really the effort we've been looking for, outside of the 4 minutes to start the second half." Oats praised the effort of Mark Sears setting a tone, "If we can take that mentality and effort on the defensive end and clean up the offense we've got something headed in the right direction."
It is the right time to be heading in the right direction. The Crimson Tide get a midweek break before playing Arkansas in Fayetteville on Saturday. After the Hogs, what's left for the Alabama Crimson Tide in the regular season can be fairly called a "Murderers Row." The eight SEC regular season games after Arkansas are against seven teams projected to be in the NCAA Tournament field.
Cleaning Up the Alabama Basketball Offense
When Oats talked about cleaning up the offense, it was because the Crimson Tide committed 20 turnovers against the Bulldogs. Mark Sears had a strong game, with solid defense, 20 points, five rebounds, and six assists. But Sears coughed up six turnovers. Commenting on the team's turnover performance, Nate Oats said, "We're gonna spend a lot of time on Monday and Tuesday figuring out how to not turn the ball over." Oats added that "12 of the 20 turnovers came from three of our 5th-year seniors. I hope those guys understand you can learn as much from a win as a loss."
Mo Dioubate was dinged up on Saturday afternoon and played only 11 minutes. He won the Hard Hat Award again, for the eighth time this season. The closest teammate to Mo this season in Hard Hats is Grant Nelson with six. Dioubate has played 316 minutes this season and Grant Nelson has played 596 minutes. Another stunning stat, is Mo averages just over 1 hard hat point for every minute he plays. In the 2021 season, Herbert Jones was the SEC Player of the Year. That season Herbert averaged just over 0.75 hard hat points per minute.
Note" Player stats provided by Sports Reference