The best offensive team in college basketball, Alabama men’s basketball had the highest scoring total and highest efficiency going into Rupp Arena on Saturday. In any case, the Crimson Tide was destroyed. SEC-leading Alabama was crushed 117-95 by Kentucky, the latest development in another wild UK basketball season. However, the defeat and overall on-court performance for Alabama
reminded fans of the Crimson Tide’s inconsistent play in nonconference games.
In terms of defence, Alabama (19-8 overall, 11-3 in the SEC) gave up 1.539 points per possession to UK, which was the Wildcats’ most effective offensive effort in over 20 years. The Crimson Tide scored on 10 of their first 11 offensive possessions, but they only scored on 9 of their final 26 first-half possessions. This included a 7:46 span in the first quarter during which Alabama managed just one field goal. With 9:15 remaining in the first half, Kentucky (19-8, 9-5) took a commanding lead, leading by 16 points at the half and never looking back.
This season, Alabama has lost all three of its conference games away, and by sizable margins: 20 at Tennessee, 18 at Auburn, and 22 at Kentucky right now. Following the crushing loss, Alabama head coach Nate Oats addressed the media at Rupp Arena. Here is what Oats had to say:
We weren’t prepared to play tonight; Kentucky was. I didn’t have my guys ready to go, but Cal (John Calipari) did. We looked terrible, and they looked fantastic. Our level of defence was… After the game, I told our guys that although there have been doubts about our defence throughout the season, they are now largely unfounded because everyone is aware that we are not a guard at this time. We turned it over, and they scored 29 points off of our 16 turnovers, which I felt was part of the reason why our effort was so poor.
The ball cannot be turned over very often. Too many of our starting backcourt’s turnovers occurred. Our performance in… taking care of the ball has to be improved. (Examines the points Alabama gave up on turnovers and transition points). Before the halfcour defence
had an opportunity to make a stop, we had already given up 45 points. We weren’t very good in the halfcourt once we entered it, in my opinion. Kentucky was the team that was expected to be able to shoot the ball, and they did so fairly well. They had twice the quality of our shots. We lost 3 out of 54%. We lost the field by a margin of 63%. Any sort of respectable defence was executed in the
