Alabama basketball put on an historic three-point shooting barrage against BYU in the Sweet 16, setting a new NCAA Tournament record with 25 made threes on the way to a dominant 113-88 win over the Cougars to get back to the Elite Eight for the second year in a row.
Alabama connected on 25-of-51 from three, hitting 12 in the first half to build an 11-point halftime lead and then 13 more in the second half to finish off an overwhelmed Cougars squad.
BYU decided early in the game that they were going to take away the paint from Alabama, packing it in tight. But it left them vulnerable to shots from long-range, something that Nate Oats and his team had no problem taking advantage of.
51 of Alabama's 66 shots from the field came from behind the three-point line, a staggering number. In fact, the Crimson Tide ultimately didn't need a single one of their shots from inside the arc to win this game:
Crazy, but true: If Alabama had not made a single two-point shot against BYU, the Crimson Tide would still have won the game. pic.twitter.com/3dDzSZk9gw
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) March 28, 2025
Alabama made 10-of-15 from two-point range. Had they gone 0-of-15 instead, the Crimson Tide still would have won the game by five points.
Mark Sears, Aden Holloway, and Chris Youngblood made history of their own
Along with all the history surrounding Alabama's record-breaking three-point performance against BYU, Mark Sears, Aden Holloway, and Chris Youngblood did something that no other collegiate trio has ever done. In fact, it had only happened one time ever at the NBA level, to boot:
Tonight @AlabamaMBB became the second team in NBA, WNBA or Division I history (men or women) to have a player make 10 threes & 2 others make 5 in the same game (excluding games vs. non-DI teams).
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) March 28, 2025
The other was the Warriors on November 20, 2022 (Thompson 10, Curry 7, Wiggins 6). pic.twitter.com/Og3J9VMbPS
Sears hitting 10 three-pointers on his way to 34 points gets all the headlines, but you can't discount what Holloway and Youngblood did, either. Holloway hit 4-of-6 in the second half, connecting on six for the game on his way to 23 points off the bench.
Youngblood hit 5-of-11 from three and scored 19 points in his own right.
When you can do something that puts you in rarified air alongside the Splash Brothers, in a year they ultimately won an NBA Championship, that's pretty special. And it speaks to the insane shooting night the Crimson Tide had in Newark.