Turnovers Crucial Factor in Alabama Basketball's Loss at Tennessee
As much as social media would try to lead you to believe, the result of No. 1 Alabama basketball's game at Tennessee on Wednesday was not due to officiating.
On Wednesday night, the Crimson Tide lost to the Volunteers. The 68-59 loss marked the first time that Alabama had been bested by an SEC opponent, snapping the Crimson Tide's perfect 12-0 conference record and handing it a 12-1 record on the flight home from Knoxville.
While there were certainly some questionable calls by officials on both ends of the court — Alabama only recorded three more fouls than Tennessee — it wasn't the men in black-and-white striped shirts that handed the Crimson Tide its first conference loss.
In fact, no one was responsible for the loss more than Alabama itself. And what was the key factor that led to the upset? Turnovers.
Over the course of the game, the Crimson Tide turned the basketball over 19 times. On the opposite bench, the Volunteers committed just eight turnovers. While that difference is certainly high, the even larger contributing factor was the points off of turnovers, which Tennessee once again led by an astounding 26-2 margin.
Even when the Volunteers turned the ball over, the Crimson Tide simply couldn't capitalize.
"We turned the ball over way too much," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said after the game. "We scored two points off their eight turnovers as opposed to 26 points off of our 19 turnovers — to me, that's the biggest area of the game."
Of the 12 Crimson Tide players that took to the court at Thompson-Boling Arena, all but three committed turnovers. The three players that committed none were Nick Pringle, Dom Welch and Adam Cottrell, with the trio playing 8, 3 and 0 minutes, respectively.
Leading all players in turnovers was guard Jahvon Quinerly, who amassed six turnovers on the night. Oats was quick to defend him, though, stating that it was an uncharacteristic performance.
"Jahvon's been good against these guys in the past," Oats said. "I was hoping he'd kinda get it going. His shooting percentage and turnovers I thought were a little uncharacteristic of him tonight, but he didn't handle their pressure as well as we would've liked."
Guard Mark Sears and center Charles Bediako tied for second with three apiece, while guard Jaden Bradley committed two turnovers. Guards Nimari Burnett and Rylan Griffen and forwards Brandon Miller, Noah Clowney and Noah Gurley all turned the basketball once apiece.
"The coaching staff's gotta do a better — I gotta do a better job at getting us ready to play in a game like this," Oats said. "We only get them once. If we get 'em again, it'll be the SEC Tournament, so hopefully we're better prepared to play against a defense like this."
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