Turnovers Doom Alabama Basketball in First SEC Loss
Alabama basketball came rolling into Knoxville on a six-game winning streak and undefeated start to SEC play in the first four games.
But that came to a screeching halt in a 91-71 loss against No. 6 Tennessee on Saturday afternoon, largely in part due to poor ball handling.
Alabama finished with 22 turnovers. The previous season high was 18 in the loss at Arizona. Those 22 turnovers led to 23 points for the Volunteers. The Crimson Tide also struggled on the glass, allowing 11 offensive rebounds and 17 second chance points.
After the game, Alabama head coach Nate Oats said that it was the most dominating performance a team had put on the Crimson Tide in a long time.
"When you give up 40 points off turnovers and second chance points, you're not going to win very many games," Oats said. "We've got to go back and figure out how to get a little tougher, take care of the ball a little bit better, and obviously we didn't do very well on defense either."
Alabama turned it over on three of its first six possessions of the game, and it didn't get much better from there. Mark Sears led the Tide in scoring with 22 points, but also had a season-high seven turnovers.
Overall, Alabama's starters combined for 17 turnovers. It completely killed any momentum the offense tried to create and led to too many easy buckets allowed on defense.
A lot of the turnovers were forced by Tennessee and because of the aggressive style of defense they play, but many were just careless passes out of bounds or right into the hands of a Volunteer defender.
"It's a combination of them being smarter, better with the ball, stronger with the ball and guys giving them outlets when they're getting trapped and pressured," Oats said. "And the combination of the two, we've got to clean up turnovers."
