Alabama Basketball Playing Like A Team

The Alabama men’s basketball team played a balanced scoring attack, with five players in double-figures, to beat Stephen F. Austin and grab a 78-68 win in Tuscaloosa.

We watched as Five Alabama players out of the eight that saw action in the game finished the night scoring double-digit points led by Jaden Shackelford’s 17 point including hitting 10-of-11 from the foul line. ), Alex Reese (15), Kira Lewis Jr. (15),. #RollTide

Alex Reese had a season-high 15 points, shooting 5-from-9 from the floor and 4-of-8 beyond the arc, also breaking a career high record of four threes made. In addition to Reese’s offensive output, Kira Lewis Jr. collected 15 points shooting 6-from-9 from the field, while adding six rebounds, three assists and a career-high tying four steals, all of which were in the first 20 minutes. John Petty Jr. and Javian Davis (11) also reached double figures as the Tide (4-4) handed the Lumberjacks (7-2) just their second loss of the season. SFA’s seven wins includes a defeat of then-No. 1 Duke last week in overtime.

Nate Oats Postgame Comments

“I thought it was a well-played game. I’m proud of our effort. With Reese not practicing all week and for him to come in and do what he did was big. We kind of had a talk and I told him, I don’t care how may shots are missed. He’s a shooter, he needs to be shooting every time he’s open. It was great to see them go in. It’ll help his confidence. John has been on fire lately. Three out of his last four games he’s hit multiple threes to kind of help us break games open. The turnovers were a problem, but I thought the middle 30 minutes of that game, after we settled down after the first five minutes all the way up until the very end, that we did a good job of not turning it over. Once we got settled down with the turnovers, the rebounding got shored up when we made the run to start the second half. Those were two areas we knew they were really good at and we were going to have to play well and we had stretches we did pretty good job of that tonight. This is a good quality win. I mean that’s a team that plays with a lot of confidence. They’re one of the hardest playing teams we’ve seen. I played at Duke when I was at Buffalo, that’s not an easy game to go in and win. For a team that went in and won for the first time in over 20 years for a non-conference team to win in Cameron, that is going to be a confident team. They came in here and I thought our defense was as good as it has been all year. I’m proud of the guys’ effort tonight.”