re: Tide Hoops | 25-12 (13-5)

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Alabama basketball +/- vs. Georgia:

Griffen: +16
Estrada: +12
Sears: +10
Nelson: +9
Wrightsell, Dioubate: +2
Wague: 0
Stevenson: -1
Walters: -5

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The No. 24/22 Alabama men's basketball trailed by as many as 16 points in the first half, and by 11 points with 11 minutes left, before a 17-5 run helped UA to an 85-76 come-from-behind road victory at Georgia Wednesday night.

The Bulldogs led 41-27 at the half, however, the Crimson Tide (15-6, 7-1 SEC) shot 62.5 percent from the field and posted 58 points in the second half to earn the win and remain in first place in the SEC standings.

Mark Sears led four UA players in double digits with 23 points, with 19 coming in the second half, to go along with a team-leading five rebounds, five assists and four steals on his way to earning the Hard Hat Award. Grant Nelson scored 14 of his 20 in the second stanza while Rylan Griffen had 10 of his 12 points come after intermission. Aaron Estrada added 11 points and matched Sears with four steals.

The Bulldogs (14-6, 4-3) were led by RJ Melendez's 15 points, 10 rebounds and three steals in the losing effort.

Head Coach Nate Oats Postgame Comments
"I can't say enough about our guys in the second half. They showed some fight, and they showed what they are about. Georgia was obviously much more ready to go to start the game. Coach White's done a great job in his second year, turning it around and the fans were great. This place did not sound like this or look like this until this year so, it is a much-improved program. They probably should have beat Tennessee here and they did beat South Carolina. They are a good team that's going to win a lot of games. They came out of the gate ready to play and we did not and I thought we missed some shots and it affected how we played offense. We came out in the second half, and we fixed a lot of what was wrong in the first half and then it took a little while to pick up. I knew we could win this game by getting stops and rebounding the ball better. They didn't score a field goal from that timeout at 10:08 until four and a half minutes to go in the game and we came out of the timeout got stops, rebounded it and did enough on offense and played hard enough, creating 19 turnovers, which counteracted the fact that we did not rebound the ball very well. Sears only had about six points with six minutes to go in the game and somehow ended up with 23. He competed and he won our hard hat tonight because he played hard, and he did not want us to lose his game tonight. Grant Nelson showed he's got some mental toughness; you know he's struggled to shoot the ball. But he's been shooting 40% from three in practice, we trust him to make shots. He's done a good job not taking too many but taking appropriate ones and those two he made late in the game were huge. I mean, they sealed the game for us. He showed he's a winner, he showed the moment doesn't get too big for him. He didn't shy away from it. We have a lot of hard games to win. If you're going to try to win a conference championship these are the games you have to win on the road."

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Full Nate Oats quote on Nick Pringle: "He's currently suspended. He's got to decide whether he wants to be part of this program or not. Some of his decisions, how he conducts himself, nothing bad off the court or anything like that. In practice, in games. We'll see where he goes. We'll meet when I get back."

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How much did Alabama outscore Georgia by after dude from Georgia did the “too short” motion towards Sears all the way down the court? Predictably Sears went off after that.

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He's not a shithead.

He's a good guy actually.

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