Three Takeaways from Alabama Basketball's Overtime Win Over Florida
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Though it looked dead in the water time and time again, No. 13 Alabama basketball dug deep to pull out a gutsy overtime win over No. 24 Florida on Wednesday night.
It did so shorthanded, too, with Latrell Wrightsell Jr. missing the game due to a head injury sustained in practice on Monday.
With Wrightsell out, the Crimson Tide supporting cast stepped up. Mark Sears was held below his season average of 20, scoring 17 and adding seven rebounds and eight assists.
Aaron Estrada stuffed the stat sheet as well, scoring 20 points while flirting with a triple double, grabbing eight boards and dishing eight assists of his own.
Those players had monster performances, and were worthy of mentioning before I even got to my takeaways. So with that out of the way, here are my thoughts from the game:
1. Grant Nelson played his best game in crimson.
While Sears and Estrada both had fantastic performances, neither led the Crimson Tide in scoring. That title belonged to Grant Nelson, whose 22 points were his most since the season-opener against Morehead State on Nov. 6.
He did so on efficient 9-of-14 shooting from the floor, looking extremely comfortable scoring in the paint.
Nelson opened the game with a thunderous slam that rocked the rim in the first half, and his confidence stayed high the rest of the game. He did the same thing in the second half, throwing down a jam over Florida's Walter Clayton for an and-one, and continued to find success inside.
It wasn't just the offensive end either. Nelson was on a mission defensively, recording a whopping six blocks throughout the game. He perfected his timing against Florida's bruising big men, and though he was occasionally outsized, didn't let it affect his effort.
"I think him playing a little more [at the] 5 has helped him, he's able to drive more. He's had a knack for making some big threes in these comeback wins," Oats said. "You go back to the Georgia game, he hit two of them late that opened the whole thing up and won us the game. The three he hit in the corner, I wanted him to take it as soon as he caught it. I don't know what he was hesitating for. We want him taking the correct threes and to build up a bunch of confidence, but the six blocks he had, the and-one finish he had, this was maybe the best game he's played on both sides."
The game was exactly what Alabama needed out of Nelson, and it seems he's finally figured out where he fits in this system.
It's not shooting 15 shots from deep like he did against Arizona, but picking his spots, attacking downhill with force, getting to the free throw line, and playing solid defense.
It's been said all season, but when Nelson is on it raises this team's ceiling tremendously.
2. Sam Walters provides the spark.
Alabama's 3-point shooting was atrocious in the first half of the game. The Crimson Tide was 2-for-18 from beyond the arc, the only makes coming from Sam Walters and Rylan Griffen.
That caused a lull in the Alabama offense as the second half began. The Crimson Tide didn't even attempt a 3-pointer for nearly the first nine minutes of the second half, which is almost impossible to even imagine from a Nate Oats-coached team.
Then Walters re-entered the game, and hit back-to-back threes. Then a few minutes later, he hit another one. He finished the game with four 3-point makes for the game, half of the eight total that Alabama made on a night where it shot just 25 percent from downtown.
But when he was asked after the game about his performance, it wasn't even the shooting he brought up.
"My mindset in every game is to focus on my defense and let everything take care of itself, because I know if I play defense I have a better chance of staying in the game," Walters said.
Oats has been extremely emphatic about the fact that you have to play defense in order to get minutes on this team, and after the game he even commended Walters for his defensive improvements of late.
"I thought Sam was big on defense," Oats said. "He was a +3 when he was in, I thought he had some good defensive plays, he came up with a tough rebound, he had the offensive rebound tip. [...] Sam was a two-way guy tonight."
That two-way effort from Walters is exactly what's going to earn him more minutes, especially after stepping up last night in the absence of Wrightsell.
Everyone knows how lethal of a shooter he is. After all, he's top-10 in the SEC in 3-point percentage. But as he keeps improving his defense and plays more minutes like he did against Florida, the freshman is going to turn into a really good player.
3. Alabama found a way without the 3-ball.
It was another unfortunate day for the "Alabama lives and dies by the three" crowd.
As I mentioned earlier, Alabama shot just 2-for-18 from deep in the first half. For the game it wasn't much better, coming in at 8-for-32. So what did the Crimson Tide do when the threes weren't falling?
It found another way.
Alabama went inside to bolster its offense this time around, scoring 56 points in the paint. Its interior duo of Nelson and Nick Pringle combined for 35 points.
Throughout the second half, every time Alabama would cut the Florida lead back down to two, or even one possession, the Gators extended it back out. It seemed like every time Alabama took one step forward, it would follow it up with two steps back, as a loss seemed inevitable.
But again, like the Georgia game were Alabama trailed 17-2 at one point, this team fought and fought until it found a way to win. It was once again the kind of win that you need if you want to win a league championship.
At this point, that championship is well within reach. Alabama sits at 11-2 in league play, with a minimum 1-game lead on every other team in the SEC.
That lead was maintained because of the effort and grit that it showed even though the 3-ball wasn't falling.
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