Alabama's offense plagued by rim finishing against Auburn
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — There were a plethora of things that didn’t go according to plan for No. 2 Alabama in its 94-85 loss to No. 1 Auburn on Saturday, but chief among them was the team’s inability to finish at the rim at a consistent rate.
The Crimson Tide was a top-3 team nationally in terms of 2-point percentage coming into the game, shooting right around 60 percent inside the arc on the season. Saturday’s performance was a far cry from that, shooting 14-for-30, or 48 percent, on point-blank layups alone.
One of the biggest culprits was star guard Mark Sears, who scored 18 points, but did so on wildly inefficient 4-of-17 shooting from the floor. Those shooting numbers included a 2-of-6 mark at the rim, contributing to the Tide’s struggles around the basket.
“Not good. He shot 4-for-17,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said of Sears’ performance. “Obviously he’s a competitor, he wants to win at a high level. He’s been able to impact winning for most of his career by scoring the ball. We had him 2-for-6 at the rim. 2-for-11 from three, 2-of-6 at the rim, those are typically the efficient shots you get. I thought maybe a couple of them – I thought he got fouled on one, but refs aren’t gonna be perfect, and we sure weren’t perfect as coaches or players. There’s probably some missed reads in there, I’ve got to go back and look at them. It wasn’t one of his better shooting nights.”
Reading off his stat sheet at the podium, Oats listed just how bad the rim finishing was from an individual standpoint and how much it hindered Alabama in this game.
“(Sears’) finishing at the rim wasn’t great,” Oats said. “He was 33 percent at the rim the whole team was 48 percent at the rim. Go down the list, Dioubate missed at the rim, he’s got to make. Labaron missed at the rim, he’s got to make. Jarin missed the one, he’s got to put two hands on it and dunk the ball. Grant missed plenty of shots, he was 5-for-10 at the rim.”
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In addition to the poor finishing, Alabama also shot poorly from beyond the arc. The Crimson Tide was 5-of-26 for the game, an abysmal 19 percent. Oats believed the ball failed to move well enough, and cited that Alabama only record eight assists as a team, one game after shooting over 50 percent from deep against Texas.
Against a team as good as the top-ranked Tigers, who are extremely capable shotmakers in their own right, that type of offense isn’t going to cut it.
“Can you keep moving the ball – the whole team only had eight assists today,” Oats said. “Nobody had more than two, so it wasn’t just him that maybe didn’t move it as much. Him and ‘Baron had two each and then nobody else had more than one assists, the ball just wasn’t moving well, period, for our entire team.
“We missed a lot of reads. We’ve got to be better, we’ve got to move the ball better, we’ve got to be a little bit more unselfish moving forward.”
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