Charles Bediako’s fate will be decided in court on Friday, and with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey backing the NCAA’s efforts to prevent Bediako from playing, it doesn’t look promising for the Alabama center and former G Leaguer.
Yet, regardless of whether or not Bediako plays on Saturday in Iron Bowl basketball at Neville Arena on The Plains, Alabama has an under-the-radar issue that didn’t bite the Tide in Wednesday night’s win over Texas A&M, but could against Auburn.
Auburn won’t take part in Alabama’s track meet, and that’s a problem
One of the inextricable aspects of Nate Oats’s philosophy is to play with pace. Alabama is 99th percentile (per CBBanalytics.com) in pace this season, and on Wednesday night scored 23 fast break points, the most the Tide have had in a game since a 97-55 win over UTSA in early December. Texas A&M and Bucky McMillan were all too willing to join Oats’s track meet, but Steven Pearl and Auburn will have different plans.
The Tigers are 61st percentile in pace this season, and over their last five games, have slowed to 64.7 possessions per 40 minutes, 35th percentile in the country. Pearl’s team is content to play a half-court game and, in doing so, force 79 percent of their opponents' field goal attempts to come in half-court sets.
The best Nate Oats teams prefer to play in transition but still thrive when they get bogged down, dissecting a half-court defense with remarkable efficiency. This is not one of the best Nate Oats teams. This iteration is overly reliant on transition and has an utter lack of rim pressure in the half-court. That’s one of the reasons Oats has fought so hard to bring back Bediako.
However, even since adding Bediako, Alabama has seen a dip in its field goal percentage at the rim and in the paint. Over the last five games, both have seen a drop, and across the last ten games, a sample that includes Bediako’s four appearances, they are under 60 percent at the rim, and more problematically, are shooting under 40 percent on all half court possesions.
Some of Alabama’s lower field goal percentage in half-court sets is a feature, not a bug. With the number of threes the Tide take, 100th percentile in three-point attempt rate this year, that percentage is bound to be lower and still provide a 95th percentile offensive rating.
Still, this year, without rim pressure or a lob threat in the half-court to collapse the defense, open threes can be hard to come by. So, if Auburn can manage to slow down Alabama’s pace on Saturday, the Tide could be in trouble, with or without Bediako, but especially if he’s deemed ineligible.