Alabama basketball back in win column after beating Eastern Kentucky
The Alabama men’s basketball team has now moved to 7-5 on the year after getting back in the win column on Saturday with a 111-67 home victory over Eastern Kentucky (4-7). The Crimson Tide had lost three straight — and four of the last five — before this one, so it was good to see them right the ship with another tough run gearing up in the coming weeks.
How It Happened
UA got on a roll early against EKU. Veteran guard Mark Sears got things going with a three-point basket on the first possession before the Colonels tied it up with a three-pointer of their own. From there, the Crimson Tide took complete control, scoring seven straight points and never looking back. Alabama strung together several strong runs from there to earn its highest scoring output of the season with 111 points. The previous high was 105, which came in the season opener on Nov. 6 against Morehead State.
Key Stats
After struggling from beyond the arc in each of its last two games, Alabama was able to get hot again on Saturday afternoon. Against Creighton and Arizona, the Tide were a combined 12-of-62 (19.3%) from outside. Against Eastern Kentucky, that number jumped to 50% after UA hit 19 of its 38 attempts. Surprisingly, Sears was only responsible for one of those 19 makes, but other than that and the lone miss from freshman Jarin Stevenson, every other Alabama player who attempted a three hit at least 40% of their attempts.
Alabama also did a nice job of moving the basketball around. By game’s end, the Tide had 29 assists while EKU only had eight. That was a season-high for the team too (by a wide margin). The previous high sat at 21, which came during a 102-46 win over South Alabama in mid-November. UA also had 20 against Purdue a couple of weeks ago, but those are the only three times the team has had 20 or more this season.
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Players of the Game
Rylan Griffen deserves a lot of credit for his performance on Saturday. The sophomore guard put up a career-high 19 points while shooting 5-of-9 (55.6%%) from the three-point line. He also added 6 rebounds and 3 assists, giving him a well-rounded output.
Grant Nelson put up 19 points of his own, which is the most we’ve seen from him since he scored 20 against Ohio State a month ago. Even more importantly, the transfer forward was back to distributing the ball to others, putting up five assists. Plus, his 77.8% field goal percentage was his highest of the season. That’s encouraging to see after a tough stretch in recent weeks.
What’s Next
Alabama has one more out-of-conference game next Saturday against Liberty (10-3), which is set for 1 p.m. CT. That matchup will air on ESPN+ before the Crimson Tide starts in on SEC play with a road contest against Vanderbilt in Nashville. The Flames are a quality team though, so we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves with the “rest of season” schedule.
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