TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— No. 4 Alabama men’s basketball took down No. 17 Kentucky 96-83 at home on Saturday night to avoid an unprecedented three-game losing streak. This victory gave the Crimson Tide the season sweep as it defeated the Wildcats on the road in January.

The Crimson Tide was down 30-18 after yet another slow start, but after a massive run, Alabama took the lead and never looked back.

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

Alabama Guard Trio Shoots Over Kentucky

Since his arrival in 2019, head coach Nate Oats has built Alabama’s offense around a fast-paced system that heavily involves shots taken from behind the arc. Year after year, the Crimson Tide is among the top scoring offenses in the nation and this year is no different as 90.5 points per game is the most in the country.

Some games have been poor for Alabama on the perimeter while others saw the Crimson Tide get hot from deep. Saturday evening was the latter as Alabama shot a fairly efficient 11-for-31 (35 percent) in the area, but it also drove to the basket for consistent makes down low (52 percent from the field).

The Tide’s guard trio of Mark Sears, Aden Holloway and Chris Youngblood led Alabama in this offensive outburst as they scored a combined 63 of the team’s 96 total points. They were clearly Alabama’s momentum swingers throughout the game and the numbers back it up.

Sears scored 30 points on 8-for-17 from the field, including 3-for-8 from downtown. Saturday’s outing gave him back-to-back 30-plus point performances for the first time in his Crimson Tide career. His 11-for-11 performance at the free-throw line helped Alabama finish the game with much-needed improvement of 84 percent from the charity stripe. The Preseason All-American guard was dominant in both halves as he scored 15 points in each period.

“I think [Sears] just wants to win,” Oats said. “I think he came back to try to win a National Championship. He came back to try to play his way into the NBA. Winning solves a lot of that stuff and I think he’s not worried about [his stats]. He’s trying to play the right way. He’s as coachable as he’s ever been and his effort on defense has been through the roof, really the last three or four weeks.

“It’s just a combination of ‘Let’s get him to lead. Let’s play the right way on both sides of the ball. Give us total effort on defense.’ And I think he’s been doing that. I’ve been super happy with the way he’s been playing.”

Holloway added 19 more points off the bench with a 5-for-12 clip from three-point land. Oats has been adamant about the Crimson Tide sixth-man’s green light to constantly fire shots and Holloway did so in a big way against the Wildcats.

After Alabama closed the first half up 47-40, Youngblood kept his team hot and constantly increased the lead in the second half as he scored 12 points in the period, including a 3-for-3 slate from behind the arc.

Crimson Tide Overcomes Slow Start

“We’ve got to have better starts. And the one common denominator has been those four fifth-year guys in the starting lineup. And they’re all great kids that want to perform well, and they’re down on themselves. So it’s not like they need me to pile on. So it’s not like they need me to pile on they need to make sure that they’re fresh and ready to go and shot out of the cannon tomorrow, and I’m hoping that’s what we see tomorrow.”

This was the message Oats gave during Friday’s press conference as slow starts have been perhaps Alabama’s main piece of kryptonite in each of the last two games/losses. The Crimson Tide started down 9-0 to No. 1 Auburn and lost by nine. Alabama then followed it up down 12-0 to No. 15 Missouri and lost by 12.

Oats said that Friday’s practice was the lightest all year with the goal of recharging his players mentally and physically. Alabama center Clifford Omoruyi, who finished the game with the Hard Hat, the best defensive leverage and his season-high 15 rebounds led to his first double-double with the team, scored the first points of the game to give the Tide its first lead in over 80 minutes.

However, the curse of the slow start came back to haunt Oats and company immediately after as Kentucky went up 30-18 a little more than 10 minutes after Omoruyi’s bucket. The Wildcats utilized Alabama’s typical prowess by shining from long range.

Kentucky guard Koby Brea and forward Andrew Carr were the main reasons for another rough defensive start for Alabama as the Wildcats duo had 21 of the team’s first 30 points on a combined seven threes with 9:37 remaining in the first half.

“I was really amped up at the beginning of the game because we needed a better start,” Oats said. “It didn’t happen. I didn’t want to panic. I thought there were times when our defensive effort was really good. You just can’t turn the ball over on offense [because] you put your defense at a disadvantage. So I just tried to stay calm. ‘Alright, that’s what we need on defense. Stop turning [the ball] over, we’ll get it.’ And they just hung in there.”

The first quarter of the game may have belonged to the Wildcats, but the latter 10 minutes of the opening half was all Alabama. The scoring efforts of Sears, Holloway and forward Dioubate cut the deficit to 30-27, and then after a Kentucky layup, Holloway, Omoruyi and forward Jarin Stevenson gave the Tide its second lead of the night. Only this time it would never go away as after it was 30-18, Alabama closed the first half on a massive 29-10 run.

“Sears’ leadership in the huddle is the best it’s ever been,” Oats said. “It’s great to have Chris Youngblood there, Grant [Nelson too]. We’ve got four fifth-year guys, this is the best Cliff [Omoruyi] has played all year. Sears is playing his best basketball of the year. Chris Youngblood, this was as good as he’s played…These four guys are determined to change the narrative about this team on the defensive end and I liked what I saw after the first four minutes.”

Of course, as the final score suggests, Alabama played far from perfect after it took the lead as it lost the offensive rebounding battle 12-8. The Tide also logged 15 turnovers compared to its 14 assists. Turnovers have hands down been this team’s biggest weakness this season as Alabama has given the ball away at least 10 times in now 18 of its 27 games.

Defense Shows Improvement

While the turnovers were an issue, Alabama’s transition defense was superb as Kentucky only scored 11 points of the Tide’s turnovers. Meanwhile Blue-Collar Hoops was just as disruptive in the passing lanes as it forced 13 turnovers. That said, Alabama consistently capitalized on them as it had 24 points off turnovers and 23 fastbreak points.

As previously stated, Brea and Carr dominated the Crimson Tide defense early, and while Kentucky’s Amari Williams (17 points) and Travis Perry (12) also finished the game with double figures, Alabama showed a ton of improvement after an embarrassing defensive performance against Missouri, when it gave up its most points in a game this season by a good margin.

Oats’ team has really struggled against opposing teams’ leading scorers. North Dakota’s Treysen Eaglestaff (40 points), Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard (38), Rutgers’ Dylan Harper (37) and even more of Alabama’s opponents have been seemingly unstoppable against the Crimson Tide defense even though these three examples all ended up losing their respective game.

Kentucky guard Otega Oweh came into this game as the Wildcats’ points per game leader (16.2) and he scored 21 points in the first game against Alabama on Jan. 18. But Saturday night was a completely different story as it was made clear immediately that the defensive emphasis was all over Oweh.

Oweh finished the game with two points on 1-for-9 from the field and even fouled out with just under seven minutes remaining in regulation. It was the first time he hadn’t scored in the double digits in the entire season. He was the only player in the SEC coming into the game to hold that incredibly impressive status.

“I thought we did a pretty good job [against Oweh],” Oats said. “I think we’ve got enough versatility on defense that if our guys would get locked into the scouting report and play with max effort, we should be a significantly better defensive team than what we’ve shown in the past…We’ve got defensive and I’ve just got to do a better job. This is on me. I haven’t held them accountable enough on the defensive end.

“Because you got Jarin Stevenson at 6-foot-10 who can move, who can chase shooters, who can make shooters shoot over him. You got Dioubate who’s as strong as can be, who can move and switch and guard one through five. Youngblood is a veteran guy who’s super strong, who’s not going to get screened, can guard strong guys like Oweh.”