High-scoring Crimson Tide soars past Sycamores, 102-80, for second win of season

In subduing a pesky Indiana State team Friday night, 102-80, at Coleman Coliseum, the Alabama men’s basketball team remained unbeaten on the young season. With the win, the No. 24 Crimson Tide advanced to 2-0 on the 2023-2024 campaign. The Sycamores dropped to 1-1.

HOW IT HAPPENED

The visitors jumped out to an early 9-0 lead, making good on three 3-pointers before Alabama answered with a 15-0 run that gave the Crimson Tide a six-point lead six minutes into the contest. ISU answered with a 17-8 run that pushed it back in front 28-26 with 7:35 left in the first half. From there, UA outscored the Sycamores 22-9 to take a 48-37 lead at the break. Alabama made good on 9 of 14 attempts from 3-point range in the first half, with guard Aaron Estrada converting 5 of 7 attempts from beyond the arc on his way to posting 22 points in the game’s first 20 minutes.

After seeing ISU guard Isaiah Swope score 15 points in the first half, UA limited the junior to just two points in the second half. Helping to keep the Sycamores within striking distance of the Crimson Tide in the first 10 minutes of the half were Julian Larry, Ryan Conwell and Jayson Kent. The trio combined to score 28 of ISU’s 39 points after the break. For Alabama, forward Grant Nelson kicked in on the offensive end in the second half, scoring 18 of his 20 points in the game following intermission. Also finding the range after the break was guard Mark Sears, who scored 17 of his 24 points in the final stanza.

KEY STATS

After making 10 of 23 shots from 3-point range in a season-opening win over Morehead State Monday night, UA converted 13 of 23 attempts from deep against ISU. The Crimson Tide also stayed hot from the free throw line, sinking 23 of 27 attempts from the stripe. Alabama held a 40-25 rebounding edge in the win, turning 14 offensive boards into 18 second chance points. While the Crimson Tide eclipsed 100 points for the second straight game, expect head coach Nate Oats to continue to harp on defensive improvement after ISU shot 50.1 percent from the field and made 26 trips to the free throw line.

OATS QUOTE

“That’s a quality win. That’s a really good, very well-coached team. We knew it was going to be that way. We knew it when we scheduled them. They were even better than I thought they were going to be when we scheduled them. For our guys to come out, start out 9-0 the wrong way, I thought our guys did a pretty good job bouncing back, staying locked in and figuring out a way. Obviously, it helped to get Aaron (Estrada) going. I think Aaron’s been pretty good for us in practice. But you’ve got three guys to score over 20. I thought that was pretty impressive. 

“Our defense was not good again. We’ve got to do a way better job on defense. Obviously, the rotation got shrunk a little bit from the last game just with how tight the game was. We knew this team was going to be a lot better, and honestly, they didn’t even have their best big. (Robbie Avila) sat out with an injury. So we’ve got to continue to get better om defense. We’ve got South (Alabama) coming in. South will play a much different style than Indiana State, but they play really hard. I think Coach (Richie) Riley has done a great job down there. We’re going to keep preaching defense, defense, defense. That’s what we’ve got.”

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