Takeaways from Alabama Basketball's Loss to Tennessee

Thoughts and observations from the Crimson Tide's first SEC loss this season.

Alabama basketball went on the road on Saturday for a difficult test against No. 6 Tennessee, and failed miserably. The Crimson Tide got blown out in Knoxville, falling 91-71.

So what went wrong, and where do they go from here? Here are some of my thoughts and observations from the game. 

1. Turnovers again spelled trouble.

Since SEC play began, turnovers have been an issue for the Crimson Tide, but nowhere near as much as they were on Saturday afternoon. 

Alabama turned the ball over four times in the first four minutes, and ended the game with a whopping 22 giveaways to the Volunteers. They capitalized off of them, too, scoring 23 points off those turnovers. 

Tennessee has a reputation for having a physical defense, and their physicality, specifically with Alabama's guards, gave them plenty of trouble. The physicality Tennessee was able to guard with threw Alabama completely out of an offensive rhythm.

Even simple parts of the game such as dribbling the basketball became challenging with the way Tennessee guarded. Crimson Tide guards were eager, even anxious to give the ball up instead of being able to create, leading to errant passes that were either deflected into steals or just went straight out of bounds. 

Obviously, Alabama's defense didn't play particularly well, as shown by the 91 points given up, but the Crimson Tide offense was one of the main reasons the defense struggled. At halftime, Tennessee had nearly double the field goal attempts, a direct results of the turnovers and empty trips on the offensive end. 

And sure, there's a chance Mark Sears was still dealing with his ankle injury, but he even finished with 22 points. No one else from Alabama finished in double figures, and most of them looked entirely unprepared to deal with Tennessee's physicality. 

2. Alabama struggled to get shots off.

Alabama didn't shoot well at all against Tennessee, making just 4-of-21 3-point attempts for a 19 percent clip. While the shooting percentage is undeniably bad, the more telling number is just the 21 attempts from beyond the arc.

Not to mention, three or four of those 21 came in the final minutes when the outcome of the game was already decided and the game looked more like street ball. 

Coming into the game, Alabama ranked third nationally with just around 30 3-point attempts per game as a team. Getting good shots up from beyond the arc is what Alabama does. Tennessee found a way to limit that, especially in the first half, where the Crimson Tide only found room to attempt seven threes. 

One of the biggest issues, again, came from Tennessee's ability to guard the ball. Alabama's best 3-point looks typically come after a paint touch, where the defense collapses and players are able to spray it out to open shooters on the perimeter.

Tennessee's on-ball defense limited Alabama's ability to get the ball into the paint at all, which allowed for Volunteer defenders to stay glued to shooters on the outside. 

When the on-ball defense is as sound and vicious as Tennessee's was on Saturday, defenders can essentially play on an island without a ton of help from the surrounding defenders, which completely limits a team's ability to get more threes off.

3. Everything is still in front of Alabama, but there's some work to do.

This loss could serve as one of two things.

The first option, is this is the team's annual road blowout loss, a loss every team has seemingly every year where they go on the road and get completely outclassed. In college basketball, it always happens.

Think back to the Oklahoma road game last season, where Alabama got beat by 30. Or think back to the 2021 SEC title team, which went on the road and got beat by 16 by Arkansas.

This game could just be that, an outlier, and the Crimson Tide could learn from it and move forward with the season.

The other option is that this game was indicative of where Alabama stands in relation to the SEC. As it seems right now, there's a clear top three teams in the SEC in Tennessee, Auburn and Kentucky.

It doesn't seem that Alabama is quite to those teams' levels yet. However, Alabama seems a tier above every other team in the SEC, based on what we've seen in conference play so far. 

Luckily, everything is still in front of Alabama, and it starts with an enormous game against Auburn on Wednesday, inside Coleman Coliseum. If the Crimson Tide gets a win over their rival this week, they'd be right back in the hunt for the SEC regular season title. 

If they lose on Wednesday, it would confirm the gap between the top of the SEC and Alabama, and making competing for that regular season title all the more difficult.

Alabama has proven it’s one of the better teams in the SEC, certainly top half, in all likelihood top five. Everything is still in front of it in terms of its goals to win the league, but it's going to take some major work, and some big wins.

Turnovers Doom Alabama Basketball in First SEC Loss