Alabama's Interior Defense Gets Dominated in Blowout Loss to Auburn

Auburn had two big men combine for 50 points, decimating the Alabama defense in the paint.

AUBURN, Ala. — Have you ever been to a high school basketball game where one team has a legitimate 6-foot-8-plus center, and the opposing team has to deal with a size mismatch that's almost laughably helpless?

That's how it felt watching Auburn feast in the paint during it's dominant 99-81 win over Alabama on Wednesday night.

Alabama basketball has had one primary weakness all season, and it played right into Auburn's primary strength. The Crimson Tide's interior defense was shredded by both of Auburn's starting big men. 

The Tigers are led by center Johni Broome, an SEC Player of the Year candidate and one of the best big men in the entire country. After posting a 25-point double-double in the last meeting with Alabama two weeks ago, he followed it up with a 24-point, 7-rebound performance in the rematch.

Broome wasn't even Auburn's leading scorer, either. That title belonged to starting power forward Jaylin Williams, who scored a career-high 26 points to lead all scorers in the game. 

Between Broome and Williams, the Auburn frontcourt combined for 50 points.

"We didn't want to double, I saw a bunch of teams have doubled and given up threes. In hindsight, as bad as we lost, maybe we should have doubled more," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said. "They may have the best frontcourt in the league, and we didn't do a very good job of [defending] it. We've got to have a better answer for it if we're going to start small like that."

In a change from the last time these two teams played, Alabama started four guards alongside Grant Nelson at the center spot, a starting lineup Alabama has used in every game since the last Auburn game two weeks ago.

Because of that lineup, Rylan Griffen, a 6-foot-6 wing, was matched up with Jaylin Williams, and continuous switches on the defensive end gave Auburn size mismatches again and again.

Alabama opted to go with larger lineups as the game progressed, using Jarin Stevenson, Mouhamed Dioubate and others, but every effort to stop the freight train inside that was Broome and Williams seemed futile. 

"We were probably better on Williams when we [went bigger], but even some of our big guys got posted and scored on," Oats said. "Maybe going small got him going and then he had his confidence going. For Williams to score 26 and only hit one three, he did a lot of damage at the free throw line and in the paint."

The free throw line is where the entire Auburn team lived for the entire night. The Tigers shot 50 free throws in the game, the most in a game by a Crimson Tide opponent since South Carolina in 2017 — a game that went to four overtimes.

Alabama got to the point where seemingly every time down the floor on the defensive end it was hacking away at one of the Auburn bigs, sending them straight to the free throw line. Williams shot 10 free throws, while Broome shot 11. The duo made a combined 18.

"There's multiple reasons, some of it's effort," Oats said. "Sometimes the team that plays harder fouls less because they're in position where they're supposed to be. When you're a step late and you're not where you're supposed to be, you end up fouling."

The fact that Alabama's interior defense struggled isn't necessarily surprising, more so it reinforces what had already been observed about this team throughout this season. 

Everyone always wants an answer to their biggest problems. Now in February, it doesn't seem like Alabama has one. Luckily for the Crimson Tide, there aren't many big man duos like Williams and Broome out there, so if major improvement doesn't feel feasible, at least this type of matchup is more of a rarity.

No. 16 Alabama falls to No. 12 Auburn 99-81 in the Iron Bowl of Basketball