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Just talked with Carter at the SuperMax100 Southeast Invitational this morning. He’s got a visit scheduled with Alabama the first weekend in March

Currently has a Top 5 of Ohio State, Michigan, Tennessee, Oregon, Colorado

How hard would it be to get one ticket to the Auburn game outside Coleman

Just a bball thought. Rest Chuck a game (or two) and rehab. Gurley can come off the bench at the 5 or 4.

That's what's kind of fun trying to think about what I'd consider as a HC. CNO has developed great depth on this team. Are we ready to start preparing for the stretch?

Opening statement…

“It’s another game after a loss where I felt our guys came ready to play. Hopefully, we don’t have too many more of those if any, after losses that is. But I do feel like our guys kept themselves mentally ready to go after we lost to Tennessee. We came out with gates, the starting group got us off to a great start and pushed the lead out. I was just informed Brandon (Miller) is the third freshman in Alabama history to score 500 points and get there faster than James “Hollywood” Robinson and Collin Sexton and are two pretty good players. So we had some history made tonight. We had an issue with our turnovers in Tennessee. Jahvon (Quinerly) had six assists and three turnovers, other than him with three no we had more than one each. Jaden Bradley had seven assists and no turnovers. Rylan Griffen and four assists and no turnovers. I’m happy with the way we moved the ball and took care of it. Obviously helps to make shots to get assists, but 14 of our 20 made fools in the first half of were assisted. The ball was moving, the defense was good, rebounding – we talked a lot about getting our rebounding shored up and thought we did a good job of that. Second chance points was 20-6. We did a much better job in that area as well, so its a good win to get us going after the loss to Tennessee.”

Benny’s Breakdown: Alabama could do no wrong on Saturday and did it ever need a performance like that after its grueling loss to Tennessee. How dominant were they you ask? Well, the entire starting five of Mark Sears, Jaden Bradley, Brandon Miller, Noah Clowney and Charles Bediako finished plus-30 in the win, highlighting the unit’s impact on both ends of the floor. The Crimson Tide also dominated in points in the paint, second-chance points, fastbreak points and bench points, tallying a double-digit margin in four of those five stats.

On Mark Sears’ hot-shooting night…

“We wanted to get him going he’s been good for us all year. He scored 17 points in 19 minutes and 17 points on 10 shots, he was really efficient. He hit that first 3-pointer and we ran a play for him to try and get him going again, it’s always nice when it works out when you’re trying to get a guy going and you get him going. I thought he had some good practices and he's worked really hard. He's in the gym, working on his game, so I was happy for him. We need him to be good for us. We need some other scoring options. Teams do a good job of taking Brandon, and he was able to get going tonight too, but it’s nice to have Sears get back to making some shots as well.”

Benny’s Breakdown: Alongside Brandon Miller, Mark Sears has become the perfect sidekick to the freshman phenom. That’s why when he scored just two points and tallied three turnovers against Tennessee, the offense seemed to sputter to a halt. What makes Alabama so dynamic on offense returned on Saturday as Sears’ fast start allowed Miller to get wide-open looks from deep which helped him find a rhythm early on Saturday. Miller and Sears’ scoring helped Alabama tally its fifth win where it scored 100 points or more this season.

On Brandon Miller scoring 500 points in his Alabama career…

“That’s why he’s the fastest freshman in Alabama history to get to 500 points because he’s consistently there every night. I mean even when teams try to take him out he finds ways. We can get some buckets in transition, he gets the offensive boards, he gets buckets and gets fouled. His free-throw percentage is high. He was 4-for-4 tonight and he has all kind of different ways to score and you can try to take him out. You can do a really good job on him and he still ends up with 14, 15, 16 on a great defensive night by the opponent who is still finding ways to average at least 15 points on a regular basis it seems.”

Benny’s Breakdown: What can’t Brandon Miller do? It’s a question opposing teams are struggling to find an answer to this season. While his 18.7 points per game is impressive, Miller has only recorded one game where he’s scored 10 points or less this season. That came against then-No. 1 Houston on the road, a game Alabama wound up winning thanks to scoring outbursts by Noah Clowney and Sears. Also for Miller to put his name in the same sentence as Collin Sexton and James “Hollywood” Robinson shows how special of a player he is and how lucky an NBA team is going to be when he’s drafted this summer.

On another home sellout at Coleman Coliseum…

"It's great to have sellouts. It's great for our guys. It shows them that the community supports them. We have a great fan base that wants to see them succeed. If we take care of business here over the next three weeks, hopefully, we’re playing in Birmingham in the NCAA tournament, and we can get as big of a pro-Alabama as we can possibly get up there. It’s great for our guys and it shows the level we’ve gotten the program to, because in my first year here we didn’t get many sellouts, especially against sub-.500 teams. It’s great that we’re selling those out now.”

Benny’s Breakdown: It’s hard to not think of that Field of Dreams scene when Kevin Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, hears “If you build it, they will come.” Longtime Alabama fans know just how difficult it was to build this Alabama program into what it has become. While Oats recently wanted to give credit to Avery Johnson for the talent his first team had when he took over in 2019, no one could have predicted this is where Alabama would be just four years later. Kudos to Oats who put the Crimson Tide on the map as a “basketball school.” An impressive feat in itself given the fact that the football team practices right next door.

Basketball is a game of matchups and execution.

Tennessee is a bad matchup and Alabama definitely didn’t execute. 0/2.

Tennessee dominated on points off turnovers at 26-2 with Alabama turning it over 19 times. They have guards that can really defend and make life terrible for other guards, and that’s what happened tonight. Sears, JQ, and Bradley did not have good games at all. When Alabama’s guards are not playing well, then it’s very tough for Alabama to score efficiently.

I really liked the effort and thought they played hard all game. The physicality that UT was allowed to play with was very excessive throughout the game and I thought that affected a lot of turnovers. They shot well from 3 (9/24) but just couldn’t have that patented 10-0 Alabama run to either pull ahead of take command.

Chalk it up as a loss and move on. Alabama won’t face a team that physical and elite defensively again unless they face UT in the SECT or Houston in the NCAA. They have to learn to play through it, but I thought they grew up some too. Even with the extreme physicality around the rim, Alabama always hung around within a few points all game.

They go home finally to face UGA and then back on the road to South Carolina. Thankfully the schedule lightens up some coming up with more home games.

Here are three takeaways from Alabama's blowout win over Georgia.

Don’t look now, but guess who sits in third?

12:00 So Carolina (132) @ LSU (7.5)
12:00 Tennessee (1.5) @ Kentucky (132)
1:00 Florida (139.5) @ Arkansas (8.5)
2:30 Miss St (3.5) @ Ole Miss (127)
5:00 Georgia (153.5) @ Alabama (18.5)
5:00 Texas A&M (150) @ Missouri (2)
7:30 Auburn (3) @ Vandy (144.5)

I find the numbers to be very interesting, but I don’t want to post them if nobody else is interested in them, so if you want me to keep posting them let me know and if not your silence will tell me. Thanks!!

ATS and O/U (Conference Only)
————————————————
South Carolina 6-7 ATS and 7-6 O/U
LSU. 4-9 ATS and 4-9 O/U

Tennessee 6-7 ATS and 5-8 O/U
Kentucky 7-6 ATS and 10-3 O/U

Florida 7-6 ATS and 5-8 O/U
Arkansas 4-9 ATS and 5-8 O/U

Miss State 7-6 ATS and 6-7 O/U
Ole Miss 4-9 ATS and 6-7 O/U

Georgia 5-8 ATS and 8-5 O/U
Alabama 10-3 ATS and 4-9 O/U

Texas A&M 10-3 ATS and 5-8 O/U
Missouri 6-7 ATS and 7-6 O/U

Auburn 7-6 ATS and 8-5 O/U
Vandy 8-5 ATS and 8-5 O/U

ROLL TIDE!!!!

I want to be very clear when I ask this that by no means am I being critical of Tony or James or for that matter any other reporter in the business. Are you guys given a list of things that cannot be talked about at these pressers?
I ask this because week after week we get these same canned questions tossed to Coach Oats with the same old canned answers tossed back our way.

Don’t get me wrong, I love when questions are asked about player injuries, but I just can’t remember a question about the inability to inbound the basketball and this is not a problem that has just popped up, it seems to have been an issue most of the year, but it really only comes to life after a rare loss.

I TRULY respect what the reporters do for the game we love and to be clear it is something that I could not do. BTW, when did Goodbread start back covering Bama hoops? Is he doing it for ESPN or has he changed jobs again?

ROLL TIDE!!!!

Alabama basketball prepares to face former guard Jusaun Holt on Saturday. The former four-star recruit transferred to Georgia in March 2022.

"I'm happy for him that he's starting and he was a good kid while he was here." — Nate Oats

Has anyone heard anything recently about Primo? It’s been a few months since I’ve seen an update

Blount wants to visit Alabama this spring. Update on Rivals:

Is he the one that is held back right around the camera a lot? #1 maybe? The only thing good about this is the lady at the end saying y’all got too much to lose!
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If things go as expected and OLe Miss loses to LSU tonight, Bama will tie them for the 4th spot. OM plays South Carolina next which should be a sure loss. If Bama can win out, they are in the drivers seat. OM definitely has the tougher games left. Tonight the Ladies hit 44 % from 3. They have several than can really shoot it.

I just watched the 2020 highlights. I believe the past two seasons with Billingsley on the team playing like he did the 2020 season we may have had a different outcome. It’s sad!

Jeremy Pruitt was in Fort Payne, Alabama buying a car today. To my knowledge, he doesn’t have a house there.

What do y’all think?⬇️

I am not to concerned with Montana Fouts this early! Duke is a very good hitting team! One player killed us today! It seemed early that Fouts was concerned about her pitch count, throwing hit able pitches with 0-2, 1-2 counts. That’s not her! Don’t know if that’s the new pitching coach or not. She has changed her pitching motion hiding the ball in her glove. Why I don’t know because almost all her pitches are fast or raise balls! Everyone knows this! I’m not a softball pitching expert but she seemed great this summer!
Hitting Out first four hitters can match up with any team! My biggest concern is that we are not fundamentally sound! We have to have these girls learn how to BUNT! We get a runner on second with no out and don’t advance the runner! This is totally on our hitting coach (Murphy) He has been around long enough to instruct our girls how to sacrifice BUNT!
Defense I am very impressed with our defense so far! We (especially our shortstop) made all the plays today! We hit all the cutoffs correctly!! They seem to be communicating well on defense!
Summary I feel a whole lot better today than last week! We definitely need another pitcher but only time will tell if we have a consistent #2 or not!
Playing These very good (UCLA) teams will make us better and expose our weaknesses that hopefully can be corrected.
Sorry for this long post but these are my observations.
ROLL TIDE ROLL!

3 star 6’9 big man Jesse McColluch is on an unofficial visit to Alabama per sources.

What y’all think?