No. 5 Alabama men’s basketball scraped by No. 10 Texas A&M 94-88 on Saturday evening. This was the Crimson Tide’s third SEC game and second conference road test of the season.

The Crimson Tide got out to a 15-point lead with less than eight minutes remaining in regulation, but the Aggies came nearly all the way back to eventually make this a worrisome win for Alabama

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

Alabama Wins Battle of the Glass

“I think [the offensive rebounding battle] will be a large factor in this game,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said during Friday’s press conference ahead of the game. “They’re No. 1 in the country in offensive rebounding rate. I told our guys there’s no chance we’re getting 100 percent of our defensive rebounds, we don’t even do that against teams that barely crash. We can’t let them get 50 percent of them, but the ones that they do get, and they’re going to get some because they send five guys a lot, we still have to guard out.”

As Oats stated, the Aggies are tremendous on the offensive side of the glass. Texas A&M’s 16.7 offensive rebounds per game were the most in the country coming into Saturday and it’s created a ton of second-chance points. These stat categories have almost always gone in the Aggies’ favor and it helped determine the outcome of many of the then-13-2 squad’s games.

However, the same can be said for then-13-2 Alabama, whose 14.5 offensive rebounds per game were good for 15th in the country.

A game can have many headlines and angles to take but the battle on the glass was the perhaps the biggest picture on Saturday night and that was apparent from tipoff. Not only did Alabama win the game, but it also won in this category as well as the Crimson Tide tallied 24 offensive rebounds to the Aggies’ 23.

While the Aggies came into the game on top of the rebounding mountain offensively, the same can’t be said on the other end as Texas A&M’s 25.4 defensive rebounding rate is 173rd in the country. Meanwhile, in addition to shining on the offensive glass, the Tide is even better defensively as its 30.3
defensive rebounds per game are third in the nation.

Alabama won the defensive boards battle 30-23. Despite suffering an injury that he came back from in the second half, Alabama center Clifford Omoruyi led the way with 10 total rebounds (eight defensive) followed by Crimson Tide forward Grant Nelson, who had eight (four defensive).

While Alabama won the Battle of the Glass in terms of the numbers themselves, Texas A&M scored 32 second-chance points compared to Alabama’s 16.

“Our guys, I thought did well,” Oats said during the postgame press conference. “We still gave up 32 second-chance points…We ended up out-rebounding them by eight, which at times it sure didn’t feel like it.”

Free-Throw & Turnover Woes

A typical college basketball game lasts somewhere around two hours, maybe 15 more minutes. Saturday night’s game went for just under three hours.

The main reason for this was due to an onslaught of free throws by both programs. To be exact, there were 88 free-throw attempts between the two of them.

While Alabama was strong on the boards, it occasionally struggled to defend the inside as Texas A&M scored 38 points in the paint compared to the Tide’s 28. Alabama often was unable to defend without fouling, but was fortunate that the Aggies were just 28-of-48 from the charity stripe. The constant whistles blown in Alabama’s direction caused a ton of penalties that even resulted in forwards Grant Nelson and Mouhamed Dioubate fouling out.

Similar to Alabama, Texas A&M also committed a ton of fouls that led to two players leaving the game early. Additionally, the Crimson Tide was also streaky at the free-throw line as it went 27-of-40. If you take away Alabama Preseason All-American guard Mark Sears’ performance from the line the Tide was 18-of-30.

“We don’t usually foul that much,” Oats said. “I’ll have to go back and look at the film. These guys play hard and physical. They were intentionally fouling us at the end to save the clock and put us at the line when they were down…We got a lot of rebounding fouls called on us. We’d been stressing that we’ve got to keep them off the glass. I guess maybe our guys, they must have been holding, trying to keep them off the glass.”

Alabama has been relatively inconsistent when it comes to turnovers throughout the season, and Saturday night’s 15 put the Tide in the wrong direction, especially since the Aggies scored 13 points off of them. Nevertheless, Alabama capitalized more often on Texas A&M’s eight turnovers as the team wearing crimson added 11 points off of them.

To end this takeaway on the lighter side, Alabama’s physicality wasn’t only harmful as it created a lot of pressure and bad shots as the Aggies went 28-of-73 from the field. Crimson Tide forward Jarin Stevenson was a big reason for this as his hustle and ability to fly all over the floor earned him the Hard Hat for the second consecutive game.

Dynamic Bench Duo

The aforementioned Mark Sears had a fantastic outing, as he scored 27 points on 7-of-18 from the field, including 4-of-10 from downtown, plus 9-of-10 from the charity stripe. Several other members of the Crimson Tide offense put up around 6-to-10 points apiece, but there were a couple of outliers who didn’t even start.

Alabama guard Chris Youngblood was the second-highest scorer off the Crimson Tide bench, making half his 3-point attempts to reset his season high in scoring with 14 points. He chipped in with five rebounds an assist and a steal for his best night of the year.

“So good,” Oats said of Youngblood’s performance. “We knew what we were getting with him from South Florida. He was the conference player of the year. He shoots it at a really high clip. He had to get off that surgery and get himself back comfortable. I told him he was going to be able to get some shots this game and we tried to kind of put him up with the press to have some other guys handling it to get him open. He goes 3-of-6 [from deep], he made a bunch of tough plays too, he’s a winner, he’s a competitor, he’s a leader. You want him in.

“I thought he did the best job on [Texas A&M guard Zhuric] Phelps tonight, and that’s with him still not 100 percent because he’s still trying to get back from the ankle surgery. His competitiveness, his winning attitude, boy it was great to see him drop some shots tonight.”

Holloway has officially found and emerged into his role with the Crimson Tide as Alabama’s top option off the bench. The offseason Auburn transfer scored 15 points tonight on 6-of-10 from the field, including 3-of-6 from deep, helping him finish in double figures for the fifth-straight game.

Sears, Youngblood and Holloway combined for stellar 10-of-22 clip from downtown. Alabama finished the game with an efficient 13-of-37 night from deep. This ended up being pivotal to the outcome as the Aggies went just 4-of-18 from long range.

“We were good enough to win,” Oats said. “It’s a good thing we shot the ball well from three in the first half. We kind of evened it out a little bit, but that’s a little more what we expected to shoot. This year we’ve kind of been struggling. You get the right guys taking them, you shoot a higher percentage.”

No. 5 Alabama moves to 14-2 (3-0 SEC) and will return home to face No. 23 Ole Miss on Jan. 14.