TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— No. 2 Alabama men’s basketball fell to No. 1 Auburn 94-85 at home on Saturday. It was the 44th-ever top-2 matchup in the college basketball regular season and the first in the SEC.

Auburn started both halves strongly, meaning the Crimson Tide had to play catch-up throughout as it never held a lead.

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

Alabama Goes Silent in Its Renowned Scoring Method

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.

Alabama had its best three-point shooting night of the season with 17 makes from seven different players in the dominant road win against Texas on Wednesday. The Crimson Tide finished the game 17-for-29 from deep, which calculates to an incredible 59 percent.

A brilliant shooting night like this often translates into the next game, but that was not the case for the Crimson Tide in No. 2 Alabama’s 94-85 home loss to No. 1 Auburn on Saturday. Alabama shot 5-for-26 from deep against the Tigers, for a gruesome 19 percent.

“They did a great job I thought on their defensive end trying to take away our threes,” Oats said during the postgame press conference. “We didn’t shoot it very well, but they contested them…We didn’t make great rim reads, but they got us off the 3-point line, pushed us in.”

Alabama guard Aden Holloway and forward Jarin Stevenson went back-to-back on threes, but those were the Tide’s only ones in the first half as it went into the locker room shooting 2-for-15 from deep while down by nine points. Alabama missed its first nine three-point attempts of the game.

The Crimson Tide didn’t do much better in the second half from long range as it went 3-for-11. It missed its first four attempts, and then following back-to-back makes from guard Mark Sears and another conversion from guard Chris Youngblood two shots later, Alabama missed each of its three tries with over seven minutes remaining. Sears finished the game shooting 2-for-11 from long range.

Alabama stormed back from a 14-point deficit––its largest of the season––to tie the game at 65 and then at 68 after Youngblood’s three. But the Tide couldn’t score on numerous opportunities in the first half and late in the second, which was key to Auburn building a lead. Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl commended Tigers guard Denver Jones for his defensive role on the perimeter, stating that he should be on the Naismith All-Defensive Team.

“Mark Sears is one of the best players in college basketball. Period,” Pearl said during the postgame press conference. “And, not that [Jones] did it by himself, but he did a great job on Mark. Made his catches tough, stayed down, stayed between him and the basket. You know, how do you stay in front of Mark Sears? Hardly anybody can. Denver Jones did, and nobody talked about it.

Defense Has Subpar Night

While Alabama really struggled from three-point range, Auburn went 12-for-30 from downtown, which is an efficient 40 percent clip. That’s seven more threes than the Crimson Tide had on just four more shots.

“We wanted to get their shooters off the line,” Oats said. “You go down the list, and too many guys got threes off. They weren’t supposed to be getting the easy ones off, and they go 12-of-30 from three. So they outscore us by 21 points from 3. And that’s just too many with the plan that we were trying to execute on our defensive end. They’re a good team on both sides of the ball. We’ve got to get better.”

In total, Auburn shot 30-for-65 (46 percent) from the field, making three more shots on five fewer attempts. Alabama needed to hope the Tigers would miss shots as the Crimson Tide committed just four takeaways including three steals. Oats’ team also blocked only three shots as opposed to Auburn’s six.

Auburn had a plethora of scoring options as a stellar six players reached double-digit points: National Player of the Year candidate Johni Broome (19 points), Denver Jones (16), Miles Kelly (15), Chad Baker-Mazara (15), Chaney Johnson (14) and Tahaad Pettiford (13). As it should’ve been, Broome was the clear focus for the Crimson Tide defensively, but Oats warned Alabama before the game that the Tigers have numerous other shooters.

But to end this takeaway on a couple of positive notes, Alabama won the offensive rebounding battle 14-7, meaning the Crimson Tide made sure Auburn rarely received more chances. Additionally, the transition defense had some positives as Alabama scored more points off turnovers (7) than Auburn (3) despite having three more giveaways.

“We did get a little bit in transition,” Oats said. “We play fast. They don’t quite play as fast as us, but they’ll definitely take advantage. It’s more that they try to play fast on live-ball turnovers more than anything. I don’t think we had many.”

Crimson Tide Struggles to Finish at the Rim

While Sears finished with a team-high 18 points, he struggled from deep and also finishing at the rim. The same could be said for the rest of the Crimson Tide as Alabama went 14-for-30 on layups. Alabama dominated Auburn 40-26 in points in the paint, but driving to the basket and scoring was not a successful task for the Crimson Tide.

“[Sears’] finishing at the rim wasn’t great,” Oats said. “He was 33 percent at the rim…I thought he got fouled on one, but refs aren’t gonna be perfect, and we sure weren’t perfect as coaches or players. The whole team was 48 percent at the rim.

“I mean, you go down the list, Dioubate had a miss at the rim he’s got to make. Labaron [Philon] missed some at-the-rims he’s got to make. Jarin missed the one he’s got to put two hands on and dunk the ball. Grant [Nelson] missed plenty of shots. Grant was 5 for 10 at the rim. Mo Dioubate 4-of-9, Grant 5-of-10, Sears 2-of-6, Holloway 1-of-3. We missed a lot of reads. I mean, so we gotta be better. We gotta move the ball better. We gotta be more unselfish moving forward.”

Through 25 games now, Alabama is averaging 16.68 assists per game, which narrowly trails Auburn (16.84) and Kentucky (17.40) for the most in the SEC). The Tigers’ 13-8 win on the assists board actually moved Auburn ahead of the Crimson Tide on the season assists counter with 421 (Alabama now has 417.

The eight assists are in a five-way tie for Alabama’s fourth-fewest in a game this season. The Crimson Tide only logged six turnovers against Auburn––tied for the second-fewest in a game this season––but it did not capitalize at the rim.

“Nobody had more than two [assists], so it wasn’t just [Sears] that didn’t move it as much,” Oats said. “[Sears] and Labaron had two each, and then no one else had more than one assist. Like, the ball just wasn’t moving well, period, for our entire team.”