The last two games for Alabama basketball have been disappointing, to say the least. The Crimson Tide had one of its worst shooting games of the season in Saturday's home loss to Auburn, connecting on just 5-of-26 from three and only shooting 50% from two-point range.
The offense found its way on the road against Missouri on Wednesday but was let down by a disastrous defensive performance. Alabama allowed 110 points and lost by 12 despite 54% from the field and 42% from three-point range.
Losing two games in a row has, predictably, led to weeping and gnashing of teeth from Crimson Tide fans. It's human nature to make big-picture proclamations in the heat of the moment. The reality is never quite as bad - or as good - as your brain makes it out to be when emotions are running high.
According to JBR Bracketology, Alabama's two-game losing streak, at worst, drops them from No. 2 to No. 3 overall, which is still comfortably a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Respect the Missouri Tigers!!!
— JBR Bracketology (@JBRBracketology) February 20, 2025
31 points from Mark Mitchell to lead Missouri to an incredible 110 point performance tonight in the win over top seeded Alabama. Missouri has continued to impress in SEC play, now 9-4 in the SEC along with TWO wins over current projected 1 seeds.… https://t.co/seqNNOdfNX pic.twitter.com/VEBdvhHVBh
Whether Alabama stays on the 1-line or not will be contingent on getting back to winning basketball games. Their status is far from secured, and the road ahead is treacherous.
The truth about Alabama basketball
1. Alabama is not good enough defensively to win a national title
An uncomfortable reality has set in. This is a really, really good basketball team. It is not good enough to win the national title, though. There are too many data points defensively pointing to issues that aren't likely correctable. It's not just effort-related, either. A lot of Alabama's defensive issues are skill-related and no amount of coaching or effort is going to change that.
Grant Nelson isn't going to add 20 pounds of muscle overnight. Mark Sears isn't going to grow three inches, either.
A month ago we pointed out that Alabama had not played well enough defensively to win the title. At that point in time, Alabama ranked 46th in defensive efficiency, per KenPom. The Crimson Tide briefly climbed inside the Top 40 over the last couple of weeks, but after last night's debacle in CoMo, Alabama is back at No. 46. Their overall defensive efficiency has actually gotten worse - they were at 98.0 a month ago and sit at 99.5 now.
No team in the KenPom era (since 1997) has won the national title with a defensive efficiency ranked outside the Top 25. The worst defensive efficiency by ranking for a title winning team was Baylor in 2021, which ranked 22nd. But their defensive rating of 91.1 would be 5th in the country this season.
The worst team by defensive rating to win a title in the KenPom era was 2018 Villanova at 94.0. That number was 11th in the country that season, though, and would be 14th this season.
Alabama's defense is much better than it was a year ago, even still, and that team made the Final Four. Last year's team cranked up its defensive effort in March. This team could do the same, but the ceiling is starting to feel more like the Final Four than winning the whole thing.
2. Turnovers - offensively and defensively - continue to be a killer
It's not a great combo when your offense is a high-volume turnover team, which at times can't be helped thanks to the breakneck speed in which Alabama's offense operates, and your defense is one of the worst in the country in forcing takeaways. The Tide is No. 1 in pace of play in the country; they are always going to turn it over more than fans want to see playing that fast. But more concerning than that is Alabama is 354th - out of 364 D-1 teams - in forcing turnovers.
The Crimson Tide forces a turnover on just 13.2% of opponent possessions while turning it over themselves on 17.3% of possessions. This results in Alabama losing the turnover battle pretty much every night, granting extra possessions and shot attempts to its opponent. That's not a winning formula.
The many, many lies about Alabama basketball
1. Alabama lives and dies by the three-pointer
If that was true, Alabama would have walked out of CoMo with a win on Wednesday night. Alabama hit 13-of-31 (41.9%) from three in the 12-point loss to Missouri.
It's a popular narrative among fans and even members of the national media. They think because Alabama takes a lot of three-pointers, its relative success is based on its shooting percentage from deep. Thankfully for Oats and Alabama, that's not the case because the Tide ranks 154th in the country in three-point percentage this season.
Sure, making a lot of threes helps. Alabama connected on 17-of-29 in the win over Texas last week and that helped them blow the game open. But Oats has said it many times and it remains true: Alabama wins games based on its energy and effort, especially on defense, and the way it shoots threes just determines the final margin.
No matter how many times the notion is dispelled, you'll still hear people talking about it. It was a popular narrative in the aftermath of Alabama's loss to Auburn on Saturday because the Tide shot so poorly from three. But it's not based in reality.
Alabama beat Illinois despite going 11-of-34 (32.3%) from three. It beat Creighton despite being 6-of-30 (20%). It recently won on the road at Arkansas despite going 5-of-19 (26.3%).
2. Nate Oats cannot coach defense
Another popular narrative is that Nate Oats is not a defensive-minded coach. His offensive philosophy dominates the headlines. And yes, Alabama gives up more points in this era than it did under Avery Johnson, Anthony Grant, or Mark Gottfried. That has everything to do with pace-of-play, though.
Alabama was bad defensively against Missouri. They haven't been bad defensively this season. They've been far from elite and aren't on the level they need to be in order to win it all, but they're also far from a bad defensive team overall. Last season's team was a bad defensive team.
But Oats has also coached two teams at Alabama (2020-21 and 2022-23) that finished seasons ranked 3rd in the country in defensive efficiency, per KenPom. He hasn't been able to pair elite offense with elite defense, though. At least not yet.
3. Cliff Omoruyi has been a bust
A popular narrative in the aftermath of Wednesday's loss to Missouri, at least on social media, is that Cliff Omoruyi has been a bust and a waste of Alabama's NIL dollars. Omoruyi wasn't good against Missouri, but almost no one was defensively. He struggled against the quickness of Missouri's Mark Mitchell and only played 15 minutes as a result.
No, Omoruyi hasn't been the singular defensive force that fans wanted him to be when he transferred to Alabama from Rutgers this past offseason. But he has been a good player for the Crimson Tide and the complaints about him just aren't rooted in reality.
According to basketball reference, Omoruyi leads the team with a 140.1 offensive rating (this does not count Houston Mallette or walk-on Max Scharnowski's 56 combined minutes). That means that Alabama scores an obscene 140.1 points per 100 possessions when Omoruyi is on the court.
Omoruyi is second on the team in defensive rating and defensive BPM (box plus-minus) behind only Mo Dioubate. He leads the team in Net Rating.
The numbers say Alabama is a better basketball team when Omoruyi is on the court versus when he is not.
4. Losing back-to-back games is cause for panic
Nobody likes losing. Especially when you lose a game after having lost the previous one, too. But the sheer amount of panic and talks of a late-season Alabama collapse I've seen from Tide fans is absurd. Any talk of that is premature at this point.
Alabama lost two games in a row. Those losses came at home against the No. 1 team in the nation. The other loss came on the road to a team ranked No. 12 in KenPom that is 17-1 on their home floor this season.
The reality is that Alabama lost to two really, really good basketball teams and the majority of teams in the country would have gone 0-2 in that stretch, too.
Unfortunately, it's not like Alabama's schedule really gets any easier. The next five games are against teams fully capable of beating the Crimson Tide. The next two are at home and games Alabama has to win against Kentucky and Mississippi State, teams it has already won road games against but that will have extra motivation to try and avoid a season sweep.
Alabama then finishes the season with three consecutive games against teams currently ranked inside the KenPom Top 5. They go on the road to Tennessee, face Florida at Auburn, and finish the regular season at Auburn.
The schedule is brutal and Alabama will have to play better than it has in the last two games to avoid a disappointing finish to the season.