No. 4 Alabama men’s basketball steamrolled Vanderbilt 103-87 on Tuesday evening.
Alabama followed the “disgusting” home loss to the Rebels with a thrilling road win against Kentucky this past weekend, but head coach Nate Oats still had the sour Ole Miss taste in his mouth. Practice went a little longer than usual on Monday in preparation for a home game against Vanderbilt, and it seemed to pay off.
There’s so much to dissect from this matchup at Coleman Coliseum. Here are three takeaways:
Bench Duo Ignites Crimson Tide Fire
After a somewhat slow beginning for the starters, Alabama’s bench subbed in and caught fire quickly. Crimson Tide sixth-man Aden Holloway scored 16 points on 6-for-6 from the field in the first half, while bench forward Mouhamed Dioubate’s perfection from the field created nine points and six rebounds. The Crimson Tide starters were outscored by the bench in the first half.
Holloway was a bit quiet in the second half but he ended the game with a stellar 22 points on 8-for-11 from the field, including 4-for-6 from long range.
“When he came here, he was shooting as well as anybody I’ve seen,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said during the postgame press conference. “If you watch him and [Mark] Sears, the two of them always come in and shoot together and it’s a real shooting contest. I mean, they go back and forth…I do think he needs to get the confidence up and get comfortable.
“How aggressive do I want him to be? I can’t get him aggressive enough, to be honest with you. I want him to take, I want him to take every single [three-pointer] that’s open. I think that game where he took 19 threes against South Dakota, I told him he really should take 22 because he passed up three. I think his reply to me was ‘Say, no more.’ So from then, ‘get them up’ because he’s not missing many.”
Dioubate finished with 22 points on 8-for-9 shooting, while also grabbing 10 rebounds, two blocks and a steal. Dioubate becomes the fifth Alabama player under Oats to record a 20-plus point, 10-plus rebound performance.
Alabama went on a cold stretch at one point in the second half, but Dioubate’s renowned hustle and effort gave the Tide momentum and life from the crowd once again as Holloway and fellow bench guard Chris Youngblood proceeded to hit big threes. To no one’s surprise, Dioubate won the Hard Hat for achieving the most blue-collar points.
“Huge game from Mo D again,” Oats said. “Mo plays hard all the time. As evidence, he’s led the team in plus-minus the last two games––plus-21 against Kentucky and plus-26 tonight in his 23 minutes. You kind of know what you’re going to get out of Mo. He’s going to play hard, he’s going to be tough and he’s going to be physical. I mean, he was our best matchup on their point guard (Vanderbilt season points per game leader Jason Edwards).”
Youngblood also had a solid night, as he scored eight points and grabbed two rebounds in 17 minutes of action. Alabama forward Aiden Sherrell is the final member of the bench to be mentioned here, but he grabbed five rebounds and dished two assists while being a big paint presence on both ends of the floor in his 13 minutes of action.
In total, the bench scored 52 points, beating out the Crimson Tide starters by one point. This quartet helped pave the way to Alabama’s team total of 54 points in the paint while shooting 36-for-64 (56.3 percent) from the field, including an 8-for-22 clip from behind the arc (36.4 percent). The Tide also blocked nine shots, but that’s where starting center Clifford Omoruyi stood out as he snatched four.
A Failing Grade in the Second Half
Oats was pleased with the Crimson Tide’s performance in the first half, as the former math teacher graded the opening 20 minutes as an A-. But the same couldn’t be said for Alabama’s effort in the second period.
Oats’ team took its foot off the gas in the second half, leading to Alabama to finish the game with one more turnover and one less assist than Vanderbilt. Additionally, the Tide had roughly half the amount of offensive rebounds as the Commodores, lost the three-pointers battle 11-for-26 (42 percent) to 8-for-22 (36 percent) and struggled from the free-throw line again as it sunk 23-for-34 (68 percent) attempts.
“I was disgusted with the second-half defense to be honest with you,” Oats said. “I thought we came out of the game with a way better attitude, playing hard. I think we held them to a .82 (points per possession) in the first half, and then it jumped up to 1.3 in the second half. So .82 against a team like this is pretty good. First 20 minutes I thought was great, but then I think it was a 1.3 in the second half, and that’s terrible.”
Alabama led 48-31 at halftime and only allowed the Commodores to connect on 12 field goals in the first half. But Vanderbilt didn’t go down without a fight despite the large halftime deficit.
The Commodores cut Alabama’s lead to 10 points with 15:47 left after a hot start from beyond the arc in the second half. But Dioubate’s aforementioned hustle swung the momentum back in the Tide’s direction.
That said, despite leading by as many as 22 in the second half, Vanderbilt cut it back down to eight points by the final media timeout with 2:54 left due to more successful 3-point shooting. The Commodores shot 10-for-19 from 3 in the second half.
“We’re off tomorrow, we play Saturday, we come back on Thursday,” Oats said. “Some guys are going have to decide how good they want to be, how much effort they want to give on the defensive end, because the effort we got in the second half is not going to win us any championships this year.”1
Mark Sears Etches Name Into College Basketball History
As previously stated, the Crimson Tide starters were outscored by the bench in the first half, but Preseason All-American guard Mark Sears contributed 10 points on 3-for-6 shooting. One of those buckets tallied Sears’ career point total to 2,500. He’s only the 82nd player in Division I history to do so.
“First off, I wanna give all the honor and glory to God, and I just wanna thank all the great teammates I have, because without them, I wouldn’t be able to reach that milestone,” Sears said during the postgame press conference. “To get an ovation from the crowd, especially being from Alabama, it just means so much to me…[If you] just pour in the hard work, things will take of itself and the game will show respect back. It means a lot.”
After two years at Ohio, Sears transferred to Alabama before the 2022-23 season and made an immediate impact. He’s grown as one of the best college basketball players in the country since then and his 2,500 career points across both schools back that up.
“I’m going to be talking about him for years down the road about what guys are capable of if they’re willing to work hard, put the time in and really do what you need to do,” Oats said. “It takes a lot of work to be this good. He’s gonna be in [the gym] tomorrow. It’s an off day tomorrow. I guarantee he’s going to be getting his shooting workout in. Every day he’s in here.
“I couldn’t be happier for the kid, especially [one] from the state of Alabama. Congrats to Mark. I’m super happy for a kid that works that hard. I can roll with a kid with his work ethic for the rest of my career. Hopefully, we keep finding guys like that.”
Sears’ second half was just as strong as his first as he ended the evening with 21 points on 5-for-12 from the field while also converting 10 of his 13 attempts from the charity stripe. The sharpshooter only took two 3-pointers, making one of them, but he also dished a team-high seven assists (the next most was just two) with zero turnovers and swiped a steal.
Read More: BamaCentral Courtside: Alabama 103, Vanderbilt 87
How Nate Oats’ Graded Alabama’s ‘Maturity Test’ Against Vanderbilt
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