BamaCentral Courtside: UCLA 88, Alabama 78 in the 2021 NCAA Tournament
INDIANAPOLIS — It was a bumpy ride, but boy was it a fun one.
Alabama basketball lost in overtime on Sunday night, falling to UCLA in overtime 88-78 in the Sweet 16 of the 2021 NCAA tournament.
Alabama performed one of its worst offensive nights in recent memory, shooting just 43 percent from the floor and 25 percent from beyond the arc. Additionally, the Crimson Tide hit just 11 of its 25 free throws.
Alabama bested UCLA in both bench points (37) and points in the paint (44), but it was all to no avail. Senior forward Alex Reese hit a three with just 0.4 seconds on the clock in the second half to send the game into overtime, but the Crimson Tide ultimately fell short.
"Really proud of our team," Alabama coach Nate Oats said. "First off, give a lot of credit to UCLA. I mean, I have a ton of respect for coach [Mick] Cronin. We go all the way back to when I was a high school coach, played against him twice now. His teams are always tough, well prepared, hard-nosed. They were that tonight. We weren't good enough to beat them tonight. They were better. They hit some tough shots.
"Give a lot of credit to their players too. Shoot, [Jaime] Jaquez and [Jules] Bernard were great. I thought Campbell was good. They stepped to the line and made their free throws and got stops when they needed to. They could have definitely — we had all the momentum going in overtime. They could have folded. They didn't, kind of punched us in the mouth to start overtime."
BamaCentral's own Tyler Martin and Joey Blackwell break down Alabama basketball's final game of the 2020-2021 season from Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis in the video located at the top of the page.
