Alabama basketball dominates Mississippi State

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The Alabama men’s basketball team is playing some of its best ball right now. On Saturday night, the Crimson Tide handed the Mississippi State Bulldogs a 99-67 beatdown inside Coleman Coliseum. The win moves them to 16-6 (8-1 SEC) on the year, which keeps them in first place in the SEC.

How It Happened

Mississippi State was able to keep it somewhat respectable for most of the first half. With only 5:23 left to play in the first 20 minutes of action, Alabama was only leading 29-22, but that’s when UA began to blow the doors off of this one. To close the first half, they outscored the Bulldogs 18-2 to take a commanding 47-24 lead into halftime.

What’s even more impressive about that first-half performance is Alabama only shooting 27.6% from beyond the arc, but spectacular effort on defense more than compensated. The Tide were able to force State into 11 first-half turnovers, which energized the crowd and allowed the offense some wiggle room. The second half wasn’t quite as strong down the stretch, but overall, it was more of the same.

Despite shooting poorly and out-fouling Mississippi State 24-16 at home, UA still found a way to win this one by 32 points. That’s extremely impressive, especially when you start to dissect where some of the offensive production came from. Let’s dive into that.

Players of the Game

Alabama got quality performances out of Mark Sears (21 points, four rebounds, three assists and two steals) and Aaron Estrada (15 points, eight rebounds, three assists and a steal). Both are worth mentioning here, but I want to highlight more unexpected contributors: Mouhamed Dioubate and Jarin Stevenson.

Dioubate set a new career-high in points with 14 while adding nine rebounds, two blocks and a steal. He was productive in the paint on offense and fantastic on defense. Stevenson also tied his previous career-high in points with 14 of his own. Most of that output came from hitting 4-of-5 three-point attempts.

The seven boards from Sam Walters also reflect his energy and effort on the evening, and Mohamed Wague was more active on the defensive end (two steals and a block). Overall, there were several players worthy of being mentioned here, as you saw a lot of guys playing passionate basketball. Alabama can do some real damage if it continues to play this way on the defensive end.

Key Stats

Really, there are a lot of things you could point to in order to paint Saturday night’s picture. I’ll highlight a couple of them though: 1) shot attempts and 2) bench points. Alabama shot 83 attempts in this game. Mississippi State, on the other hand, on got up 55. That’s a significant difference and played a factor in the game. Players were getting up and down the court, moving the ball well and creating a lot of second-chance opportunities.

The bench points were extremely lopsided too (47 for Alabama, 22 for State). When you’ve got two bench players scoring more than every Bulldog other than Tolu Smith III, this is the result. If Nate Oats can continue to get this level of impact from his bench, what out. The upcoming stretch of games will tell us a lot about this team though.

What’s Next

Alabama will now be back out on the road for back-to-back away games. First, it’s a trip to Auburn to take on the in-state rival. Then, it’ll be a road matchup against LSU in Baton Rouge. The Alabama-Auburn game is set to tipoff at 6 p.m. CT (7 p.m. ET), and it’ll air on ESPN2. UA won the first contest 79-75 late last month.

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