re: Tide Hoops | Please Anchor

Honestly, I was really, really proud of the effort last night. We were dominating one of the best rebounding teams on the boards and were playing extremely hard on the defensive end. Our starting lineup has actually looked pretty good in the first 25-30min both at AU (2nd half comeback to get it to 2-3 pts) and last night (dominated the first 4 min and were playing very hard pretty much the whole game). Our bench is currently nonexistent and can’t even give us a few minutes of serviceable effort. There were lineups in the game last night that had absolutely zero chance to score against KY’s defense, but you can’t play all of starters 38min at our pace and expect to win. About midway through the 2nd half, we run out gas and even our decent shooter’s don’t have their legs anymore to shoot a good percentage. If I cringe every-time I see Rojas or Gary take a 3, imagine what the players who are busting their tail off are feeling.

We had better ball movement last night and played really hard, but careless turnovers (soft on driving to the middle, KY has quick hands and deflected a bunch) and 5yr old Upward Basketball shooting percentages did us in. I’m not happy about that, but can live with that over the no effort games we’ve had this year.

JD was bad and looked like a fish out of water. I don’t know if you guys remember, but Primo had a stretch, even before getting injured, where he totally disappeared for several weeks. A bunch on this board were commenting on it, but we were still winning games due to the Herb/Petty leadership and Shack/JQ roles being perfect fits for them. JD’s not as good as Primo (shooting, defense, etc.), but the going into a freshman shell part looks eerily similar. He still hustled hard last night, but we don’t have the luxury of not needing quality minutes from him like we had with Primo last year (largely due to Burnett injury, and whatever is going on with Miles).

Other than the Rojas and Gary 3s, and the continuing horrid…like absolutely unexplainably horrid…use of timeouts, I think coaching was pretty good last night and liked what I saw on D, rebounding, toughness, and movement on Offense. Chuck played great! Guys didn’t quit..Gurley was pissed he missed a layup toward the end and Shack seemed upset for missing a wide open 3 off an O-board even when the game was largely over. I can live with that against a KY team that waxed Kansas at Kansas (who just waxed Baylor that it took a lot for us to beat at home).

SOG and, surprisingly, IRobbed are right on (loving your “new look” IRobbed!). Keep playing hard, make the tourney regardless of what seed, and hope you can get hot at the right time and turn into UCLA from last year. If not, we regroup for next year and have hope that the new “field house” has softer rims in 2024! Ole Miss is a big game, we need to play hard and win it!

Honestly with some of the eggs we’ve laid this season I don’t see a game left on that schedule I can call a win. And I don’t see any that are absolutely a loss, although UK is close.

I will add, that it seems like we are fixing issues but then another one pops up to beat us…like we are playing a frustratingly painful game of Bball whack-a-mole. Earlier this season it was lack of toughness, rebounding, effort, and FT shooting. We fix the FT shooting and win a couple games due to very high %s, and after the UGA loss have seemed to fix the effort, D, Rebounding issues (turnovers still an issue but KY’s good on defense). Now we can’t shoot…like at all…and would have won with a below average 30% from 3s night. As a player or coach, that’s got to be really frustrating to be working hard to fix issues only to see a completely different one rise up to secure the L. That’s the definition of inconsistency. If they keep working, I’ve got at least a sliver of hope that it can come together in March (but we will need JD to figure something out and at least not be a train-wreck on the floor).

I’ll go a different direction. We have 3 guards averaging 30+ minutes and we don’t have a deep bench.

We have played an unrelenting schedule. Yet we keep hearing “energy was great at practice, don’t know why it was worse in the game,” and “we played well against Auburn and Kentucky for 30 minutes” and “maybe those guys need to get in the gym a little bit.”

Bottom line, I think Oats’s practices are killing this team. We aren’t deep enough to go balls-out every day in practice trying to “fix it” for the games only to have no legs for the games.

The first thing to go from tired legs is 3-point shooting.

If your issue is overall fatigue, grinding it out at practice isn’t the answer, it’s the problem.

Of course your players aren’t going to speak up when they keep hearing “we aren’t trying hard enough.”

In Pearl’s post game against UGA, he said he knew his team was a little bit tired from the grind. Auburn is 10 deep, has ZERO guys playing 30 mpg, and played Oklahoma > Bama > UGA.

Bama on the other hand, just played 3 top 5 teams in a row with a viable 7-8 man rotation… if Auburn is tired, Bama has jelly legs at this point.

Not a lot of great things to say after watching that game. I too was impressed with defensive intensity and rebounding, especially early.

Bediako looked like a grown man out there early on, he came to play.

Kentucky only plays 7-8 and seems to be playing its best ball down the stretch of the season. So maybe you’re correct about practice. I’ve actually heard calipari say that during the season they go hard but they only practice for an hour or hour and 15 minutes.

Alabama Falls to No. 5 Kentucky, 66-55, Saturday Night in Coleman Coliseum

The Crimson Tide drops to 5-3 this season when playing AP-Top 15 teams

The Alabama men's basketball team fell to No. 5/7 Kentucky, 66-55, in Coleman Coliseum Saturday night.

Not only was it a season low in points scored for the Crimson Tide, which came into the game ranked 12th nationally in scoring average (81.4 ppg), but UA also set low marks for field goals made (18), field goal percentage (28.1 percent) and three-pointers made (3).

Freshman Charles Bediako led the Tide (14-9, 4-6 SEC) in scoring and rebounding on the night, matching his career-high in both points with 12 and rebounds with eight. Guard Jahvon Quinerly added seven points, five rebounds and four assists.

Kentucky (19-4, 8-2) was led by freshman TyTy Washington's 15 points while forward Oscar Tshiebwe added 10 points and 15 rebounds.


Head Coach Nate Oats Postgame Comments
"It was a frustrating shooting night for us. It's hard to win games going 3-of-30 from three. I thought we had some good looks. Our missed shots affected us on the defensive end of the floor as the game wore on. I thought we played hard on defense for the most part. We can't let missing shots affect how hard you play on the other end. We started to think about it too much. We just needed to lose ourselves in the game. If you miss some shots, you miss some shots and that's just the game of basketball. But when you start overthinking all of your missed shots, it affects your effort on defense and you start to feel a little bit of a tail spin. I think then you begin to overthink your offensive stuff, and it turned into one of those nights. We have got to be a little more mentally tough. We have to be able to handle the bad shooting nights and still play hard. I mean we have won big games where we didn't shoot it well, and some of our bad loses was where we did shoot it well. So, I thought our defense was better overall than it had been in some of our loses which was a good thing. Otherwise, we would have gotten blown out, but our offense really failed us tonight."

(From before the game and may have been discussed here somewhere back in the thread. The article said he would be on the bench for the game but he wasn’t out there at all)

Alabama Basketball Forward Darius Miles Out vs No. 5 Kentucky

The sophomore forward will not play Saturday night due to a team-issued suspension.

"Based on our conversation, moving forward how he handles himself, I plan on him being available on Wednesday," Oats said in the postgame. "That’s the plan. We’ll see how the conversations go with him moving forward.”

i am by no means and X and O kind of guy and i know some of you are. It seems from my couch that we have one offense which is JD, mostly, dribbling the ball down with no sense of urgency, unless it is a fast break. 3 guys are posted around the perimeter with one guy low on the blocks. There is very little movement meaning the D guys are not wasting energy chasing anyone. Sometimes the pg drives and dishes and sometimes he will eventually pass to a player on the perimeter who may take the PG spot and do the same thing.