The 2025 Alabama Basketball season has likely been more challenging than Mark Sears expected in his fifth season. From November into early January, his 3-point shooting was wildly inconsistent. In the loss to Purdue, his accuracy was 16.7%. In the loss to Oregon, Sears was worse; 1-for-11 and 9.1%. He opened the SEC basketball season shooting 16.7% outside the arc against Oklahoma.
Sears recovered his long-range accuracy. With only a couple of blips when he took few threes, he has been solid. Over the last eight games, he is making threes at 41.3%.
There have been other problems. In the Alabama Basketball win over LSU, Sears watched the second half from the bench. He was understandably disappointed in the 20-minute demotion. In practice and games since, he has bounced back defensively and has been praised by Nate Oats for doing so.
It is important to remember that Nate Oats was also displeased with defensive lapses by other players. Sitting Sears sent a message to the entire team. The strategy worked. The Crimson Tide has played better defense since.
Nate Oats and Mark Sears have another challenge. Like the defensive inconsistencies, Sears is not the only player with a problem. An overall team problem is turnovers. With Sears often leading the offense, the ball is in his hands more than his teammates. Sears leads the Alabama Crimson Tide in turnovers per game at 2.7 in SEC play. That number does not signal a five-alarm fire; except for the Tide's last two games. Against Mississippi State and Georgia Mark Sears had 13 turnovers. Against the Bulldogs, Alabama made 20 turnovers. Though the Bulldogs only had six turnovers, the disparity did not affect the outcome because overall the Tide is a much better team than the Bulldogs. Against tough opponents, such a turnover problem will produce losses.
After the Georgia game, Nate Oats said, "We’ve got to fix the turnovers. It’s a major problem. We’ve had this issue way too many times. It’s going to come back to bite us if we don’t get it fixed. Particularly on the road.”
Most Troubling for Alabama Basketball
More troubling is which players are turning the ball over the most. Against Georgia, 12 of the 20 turnovers came from Alabama's five-season players, Sears, Grant Nelson, and Chris Youngblood. Nate Oats added, "I hope those guys are mature enough to understand you can learn just as much off a win as you can off a loss." Oats did commend Mark Sears for his hustle after turnovers.
The resurgence of the Arkansas Razorbacks suggests a serious threat on Saturday. In the recent Arkansas road wins over Kentucky and Texas the Razorbacks averaged just eight turnovers. Playing in Fayetteville, Alabama cannot turn the ball over as it did against Georgia. It's time for Mark Sears to overcome another challenge.
Note: Player and team stats provided by Sports Reference