No. 4 Alabama men’s basketball fell to No. 15 Missouri 110-98 on the road on Wednesday night. It’s the Tigers’ most points in an SEC game in program history.

Alabama started down 12-0 and had to play catch-up for the rest of the game as the Crimson Tide’s offense woke up but the defense never did.

There’s so much to dissect from this matchup at Mizzou Arena. Here are three takeaways:

Missouri Walks Through Alabama’s Defense With Ease

Alabama’s defense was a disaster. There’s no way of going around it. While the Crimson Tide’s defensive efficiency has improved a ton since last season, its points allowed per game haven’t as in both years Alabama’s been in the bottom-30 of that stat category.

Facing a top-20 scoring offense on the road will often make this even more difficult and that’s what was shown on Wednesday. A little over two minutes into the game, the Tigers came out swinging as their 5-for-7 clip from the field led to an immediate 12-0 lead in front of a raucous Mizzou crowd.

The Crimson Tide closed the first half down 59-46. It was Missouri’s most points scored in a half against a ranked opponent this season and the fourth-most in a half this season (most in SEC play). Tigers big man Mark Mitchell was a massive reason for this as he scored 18 points on 8-for-11 from the field. This was a theme for Mizzou in the opening 20 minutes as it shot 61 percent in that span.

Alabama head coach Nate Oats made the moves to bench starting guard Chris Youngblood and starting center Clifford Omoruyi to open the second half and replaced them with forwards Jarin Stevenson and Mouhamed Dioubate. Alabama made a bit more progress with this new lineup as it cut the lead to within 10 numerous times, but the sluggish defense kept the Crimson Tide from being in a single-digit deficit until the below 12-minute mark.

Tigers guard Caleb Grill was a big reason for not allowing Alabama to come all the way back in the second half as he finished with 25 points and the aforementioned Mitchell continued his dominance to total a career-high 31 points.

This was by far Oats and company’s most points allowed in a game as the next closest was 97 in the win over Kentucky.

Missouri was Alabama’s second opponent in an all-ranked final seven games. The Tide must find a way to perform well on both ends of the floor throughout this gauntlet of a final stretch as some opponents are dominant offensively while others are stout defensively.

Mark Sears Shines During Comeback Attempt

It’s indisputable that no one on the Alabama men’s basketball team has been criticized more this season than guard Mark Sears. To be fair, the Preseason All-American has had numerous games in 2024-25 that have been subpar for his elite standards due to turnovers and inconsistent shooting. Sears had four turnovers on Wednesday night, so that’s still a bit of an issue.

But the same can’t be said for his performance as a scorer against Missouri. Sears was one of the Crimson Tide’s few bright lights early as he scored 14 points in the first half. This continued in the second period as he led his team out from the dark to narrow the deficit all the way down to six points with less than 10 minutes to go.

However, despite scoring 26 points prior to the timeout, the rest of Alabama couldn’t help Sears the rest of the way. Missouri’s offense continued to blitz through the Tide’s defense but the Alabama guard wouldn’t let the Tigers run away with the lead as he led his team back to a six-point deficit another time with one minute remaining in regulation. Sears scored a season-high 35 points, but a couple more Alabama turnovers ended the game.

There wasn’t too much help offensively for Sears throughout the night. Nevertheless, guards Labaron Philon (14 points) and Aden Holloway (11) and Mouhamed Dioubate (13) each tallied double-digit points. But obviously there’s a huge difference between the top scorer and the runner-up. Sears also led Alabama in assists with five.

Slow Start Proves to be Detrimental Once Again

There have been plenty of issues across both of Alabama’s last two losses against No. 1 Auburn and No. 15 Missouri, but both of them revolved around a deficit that the Crimson Tide had to play catch-up against for the rest of the evening.

Against Auburn, the visiting Tigers scored the first nine points of a contest Oats’ team lost 94-85. Days later in Columbia, the Crimson Tide gave up the first 12 points of the game in unanswered fashion, and the final score was 110-98.

“They started out 12-zip, scored 18 before the first media [timeout],” Oats said during the postgame press conference. “Getting our guys ready to go is part of my job as a head coach, and I didn’t do a very good job of it tonight. We didn’t start the game out well.”

Oats said after the Auburn game that his squad talks about starts and ends to halves. Bruce Pearl’s Tigers closed the first half of that game on a pivotal 7-0 run. Alabama did score the last points of the first half on Wednesday, though it was still behind by double digits going into the locker room.

A big reason for the early deficit against Missouri was due to the amount of turnovers. This has been perhaps Alabama’s biggest weakness throughout the season and it was in full effect in Columbia, Mo. on Wednesday as the Tigers are among the best in the country in steals per game.

Alabama finished the game with 14 turnovers, but 10 of them came in the first half. The 10 giveaways are tied for the third-most in a half in SEC play and Missouri scored 21 points off of them. The Crimson Tide is running out of time to fix this as it’s at the bottom of the conference in turnover margin, especially with the recent performance of the defense.