Alabama Basketball's Season Ends in Elite Eight at Hands of Duke

NEWARK, N.J.–– Alabama's bid for a return trip to the Final Four was ended by the No. 1 Duke Blue Devils.

Duke's defense was absolutely stifling the Alabama offense, which came into the game as the best scoring team in the country, as the Blue Devils cruised to a 85-65 win over the Crimson Tide to win the East Region at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday night.

"Obviously a tough night for us," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said after the game. "Duke obviously had a big part to do with that. They're a great team. They've got great players. Coaching staff did a good job getting them ready. Only one team is going to end up cutting the nets down in San Antonio. It won't be us this year.

"I told our guys, we've raised this program to a level where the standard is really high. 99 percent of college basketball players would trade places with these guys with the year we had. But we're disappointed. We had bigger goals, and it's disappointing to go out like we went out."

Alabama got punched in the mouth out of the gate. The Blue Devils built up a 10-point lead at 15-5 less than five minutes into the game. Crimson Tide forward Aiden Sherrell hit back-to-back 3s to cut into the Duke lead and prevent the game from getting out of control too early.

But the early lead by Duke proved to be the difference in the game as Alabama could never quite string together enough stops or makes to get the deficit back within single digits for most of the second half.

"That kind of had to do a part of why we lost," Alabama forward Mouhamed Dioubate said. "I feel like if we would've came out with a tighter score and had more stops, we could've dicated the game more. We had multiple opportunities when we cut the lead down to eight, to make an impact, and we failed to do it."

Alabama went on a long scoring drought of over five minutes late in the second half that ended any hopes of a comeback and put the game out of reach for good.

The Tide didn't have an answer for Duke's 7-2 center Khaman Maluach on either end of the floor. His size created all sorts of problems for Alabama offensively, and he scored 14 points for the Blue Devils. Kon Knueppel led the way with 21 points.

Duke led by as many as 13 in the first half. Alabama went on a 7-0 run to cut the deficit to six points and got a stop on Flagg on defense. However, no one secured the defensive rebound for the Crimson Tide, and Duke's Caleb Foster nailed an open 3 to kill the Tide's rally and push the lead back to nine.

Grant Nelson scored a basket on Alabama's final possession of the first half to ensure that the Crimson Tide was within single digits heading into the break at 46-37.

Alabama came out of the half strong, but the closest the Crimson Tide got in the second half was six points. Any time Alabama scored, Duke had an answer. The Tide showed flashes of good things, but Duke was just simply the better team.

After setting an NCAA record for 3-pointers in a tournament game against BYU in the Sweet 16, Alabama struggled from beyond the arc with Mark Sears and Aden Holloway only making one apiece.

Labaron Philon led Alabama with 16 points. Nelson and Chris Youngblood both had 10.

It was a historic season and run for the program in Year 6 under Oats, but the loss ends the college basketball careers of Nelson, Sears, Youngblood and Clifford Omoruyi.

"I'm just blessed to be able to play for the University of Alabama, especially being from the state of Alabama," Sears said after the game. "Even though this season didn't go the way we wanted it to, I'm just very thankful I got the chance to play for Coach Oats and the University of Alabama.

This story will be updated.