Full-Court Press: Takeaways from Alabama Basketball's 2023 Season
Honestly, it feels weird that it's over.
The 2022-23 iteration of the Alabama basketball team was one of the most memorable in program history, and the team's season came to an untimely end on Friday night with a defeat at the hands of San Diego State in the Sweet 16.
Now, a few days removed from the loss, and after time to reflect on this team's long and crazy journey, I've come up with a few takeaways that I feel best summarize the season we all just witnessed.
1. This team was built on perseverance and mental toughness.
The first time you could tell Alabama was a mentally tough team was in the Phil Knight Invitational in late November. Coming off a 15-point loss to UConn, the Crimson Tide needed a win to leave Portland with a winning record, and it found itself in a four-overtime battle against then-No. 1 North Carolina.
Alabama scratched, clawed, and fought its way to a grueling victory, and showed everyone for the first time that this team full of newcomers and freshmen was more mature than many of us thought they could be.
Fast forward two weeks, and Alabama was once against facing a No. 1-ranked team, this time the Houston Cougars. In the second half, Alabama trailed by 15 in the raucous Fertitta Center, and it looked like Alabama was going to get run out of the gym.
Instead, The Crimson Tide kept its composure, and came back to secure one of the best wins that college basketball saw all season.
Later on in the season, once Alabama established itself as one of the top teams in the land, disaster struck. A young woman in Tuscaloosa lost her life, and ex-Alabama forward Darius Miles was charged with capital murder. A heartbreaking and tragic event that could have easily sent shockwaves throughout the team and derailed the season entirely, instead brought the team closer together.
The players leaned on each other time and time again as the heat and outside noise ramped up around them. The noise upped tenfold when Brandon Miller's involvement in the tragedy was publicized, and it would have been entirely understandable for basketball to fall by the wayside.
Basketball, for this team, was a safe haven.
Just a day after his name was all over the headlines, Miller dropped an Alabama record 41 points in an overtime win over South Carolina. The Crimson Tide followed that up with two more comeback wins against two heated rivals, the first over Arkansas and the second over Auburn in a game for the ages.
Bonds that followers of this team saw blooming back in July during the team's trip to Europe became apparent on the court, and the unselfishness of players with fluctuating roles materialized.
Head coach Nate Oats told stories about different players asking to be subbed out for their teammates who were having a better game. Players like Noah Gurley and Nimari Burnett stayed ready for when their number was called to be able to contribute for their team.
Jahvon Quinerly stepped up in a massive way after fully recovering from his ACL tear, and led the team to multiple huge victories in March.
Every time in seemed like there was a reason for this team to fold, they found a way to stay together and keep on moving. That fact shows exactly the way this team was wired, and how it should be remembered.
2. Alabama did not live, or die, by the three.
Every time Alabama basketball loses a game in a tournament setting while not shooting the ball well, this narrative tends to pop up.
Yes, it's true that Alabama shoots a high volume of 3-pointers. According to KenPom, it actually shot the ninth-highest amount of threes in the country by volume percentage of its offense.
However, Alabama's success in 2023 did not rely on its 3-point success rate, but rather its ability to defend.
If you were arguing for the 2022 team, I would have a hard time disagreeing with the point of that team living and dying by the three. In 2022 Alabama ranked just 92nd in defensive efficiency, so a lot of results were contingent on whether the 3-ball was falling of not.
This year, that wasn't the case.
The average college basketball team shoots roughly 34 percent from beyond the arc. In games where Alabama shot below 34 percent from three, it won 15 times and lost just four times.
Over Alabama's last ten games, it shot just 28 percent from three. If you take out the lights-out shooting game against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Alabama shot just 19 percent from three down the stretch.
That's an abysmal clip, and one that would typically spell doom for most teams. It's also rather unlikely that so many proven shooters on the Alabama team, such as Miller, Burnett, Mark Sears, Rylan Griffen, and others would all go cold from distance at seemingly the same time, yet it happened.
But when the shooting slowed, Alabama didn't fold. Over the aforementioned last ten games, the Crimson Tide still finished with an 8-2 record. It found other ways to win, typically relying on its top-3 defense, and while the wins weren't pretty, they still came.
There have certainly been Oats coached teams that live and die by the three, 2020 and 2022 to be specific. But with the well-rounded nature and defensive prowess of this team, that narrative just doesn't have anything to hold on to.
Now yes, Alabama did shoot just 11 percent from three in its season-ending loss to San Diego State, but to me, that's a correlation and not a causation.
If this team truly lived and died by the three, it would have lost many, many more games down the stretch than it did with the way that it seemingly forgot how to shoot the ball.
3. This was the best team in school history.
No, this team didn't have the deepest March run in school history. That title belongs to Mark Gottfried's 2004 squad, which made the Elite Eight. That team, though, had a final record of just 20-13 and was an 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Alabama has had nine other teams make the Sweet 16 in its history, and the one we just watched all season accomplished the most out of all of them.
There have been three teams in Alabama basketball history to win both the SEC regular season title and the SEC Tournament championship in the same year. Those teams were 1987, 2021, and 2023. All of those teams boasted a 16-2 record in conference play, which is still the school record for regular season conference wins.
Additionally, all three of those teams also featured the SEC Player of the Year. Derrick McKey was Co-Player of the Year in 1987, and of course Herb Jones in 2021 and Miller this season.
What sets this team apart from the other two? This team won 31 games. That's the school record for most victories in a season.
This team was also was ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll for just the second time in school history, and even finished the season ranked No. 1 in the final regular season poll. On top of that it secured the first NCAA Tournament 1-seed in school history, and was awarded the No. 1 overall seed going into the tournament.
It may not have ended the way fans had hoped, but this team was historic in so many ways that it would be incredibly difficult to make a case against it as the best team in program history.
Personally, I'm convinced.
4. A strong foundation has been set for the future.
Alabama learned it firsthand with its loss to San Diego State: experience wins in March.
The one-and-done will never go away, as high school talent is continually getting better and more NBA-ready by the year, but that is no longer what wins championships in college basketball.
Of all the starters in the Elite Eight this season, only one was a true freshman, while 16 were seniors. This year, Alabama started three freshmen for the majority of the season and had four playing significant minutes.
It goes without saying that losing Miller and likely Noah Clowney as well to the NBA will hurt Alabama's roster next year. But, one thing the 2024 rendition of Alabama basketball will have is a wealth of experience.
Unlike the 2021 Sweet 16 season where many of the contributors departed such as Jones, John Petty, Alex Reese, Jordan Burner and Josh Primo, this year's team should return a large bulk of talent.
Sears will be back for his fourth year of college basketball. Charles Bediako, who made massive improvements throughout the year, will be back with another offseason in the strength program to make him that much better. Griffen and Jaden Bradley will be back as sophomores who gained tons of experience in their first year.
Burnett will now be a veteran and likely a vocal leader in his third year in the Alabama program. Nick Pringle has the chance to step into a larger role. There's also Davin Cosby, an incoming freshman who enrolled early and redshirted to get acclimated to the program instead of waiting until the summer.
All the while, Quinerly still has a chance to return for one final year if he so chooses, which would give even more experience to next year's team.
I'm not saying next year's team will be better than what we just saw, because in all likelihood it won't be. What I am saying, though, is that a strong foundation has been set with experienced returners who will be hungry to build off the year they just had as they all continue to improve.
Of course, the roster isn't complete and there are still freshmen to join the team this summer as well as likely transfer portal additions, but the framework of another dangerous roster in the SEC is there for Oats to work his magic with.
See also:
What the 2023 Alabama Basketball Team will be Remembered For
Veteran Physicality Becomes Alabama Basketball's Ultimate Undoing
BamaCentral Courtside: No. 5 San Diego State 71, No. 1 Alabama 64
