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Repeatable? Maybe not, but Alabama’s historic 3-point performance just showed why it can take down Duke
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As it turns out, Alabama can still shoot. Imagine that.
The team with the No. 1 offense in America who made an average of 10 3s per game made some forget about that during a quiet, but not disastrous start from long range in the NCAA Tournament. The Tide only needed 13 triples to get through opening weekend.
On Thursday against BYU in what figured to be a Sweet 16 shootout of epic proportions — the over/under was the highest of any NCAA Tournament game in 30 years — the Tide didn’t necessarily need to break the record for 3-pointers in an NCAA Tournament game, but it certainly helped. A lot. The Tide shattered Loyola Marymount’s 35-year-old record of 21 3-pointers in an NCAA Tournament, and it did so with 8 minutes to play. By night’s end, Alabama’s 25 3s were the new mark for made treys in an NCAA Tournament game, which was the headline of a lopsided 113-88 beatdown of BYU.
Yes, Alabama also attempted an NCAA Tournament record 51 long-range shots, but hey, the Tide couldn’t have had one without the other. Nate Oats said afterward that the ability to attempt that many triples in a game was unique. Catching fire the way that Alabama did was the most unique part.
And yeah, a team with that kind of ceiling can take down Duke in the Elite Eight.
Of course, that’s assuming a few things. For starters, it’s assuming that Duke is indeed going to avoid the Caleb Love superhero game and take care of Arizona in its Sweet 16 matchup. As of this writing, we don’t know the result of that matchup. It’s also assuming that a first-team All-American like Mark Sears is going to look the part like he did on Thursday night.
To say that Sears was “due” was perhaps an even greater understatement than predicting that Alabama-BYU would be a track meet. The latter felt a bit more imminent after Sears entered Thursday riding a 5-for-35 stretch from 3-point range in the last 6 games.
Fifteen minutes in, he already had has many made 3s (5) as he had in those previous 6 games. It turned out, he could still shoot, too. He finished the night with a game-high 34 points on a whopping 10 3-pointers (tied for 2nd most by a player in NCAA Tournament history), which doubled that total from the last 6 games combined.
Sears felt like a cheat code. By night’s end, Alabama’s entire offense felt like it had the green light to let it rip from deep. Only 10 made field goals were 2-pointers compared to those 25 3s, 5 of which came from Chris Youngblood in a 19-point effort, and Aden Holloway poured in 23 off the bench on 6 made treys.
Pick whatever word you want for it — blitzkrieg, explosion, barrage, etc. They all play. Alabama just kept coming, and there was nothing that BYU’s perimeter defense could do to change that.
Thus is life when the Tide is a-rollin’.
Water found its level in an extreme way, especially for Sears. Whether that’ll continue against a Duke team that entered the Sweet 16 ranked No. 4 in adjusted defensive efficiency remains to be seen. Duke only allowed 7 teams to hit 10 3s in a game, and even when the Blue Devils allowed a season-high 14 triples against Notre Dame, it still won by 8.
Take that for what it is. Duke hasn’t faced a team that could shoot like Alabama … which we know because nobody in the history of the NCAA Tournament had shot like Alabama. Repeatable? Probably not.
But for an Alabama team that had looked a bit vulnerable in recent weeks, that could prove to be of significance. We knew that the Tide were going to live by the 3 and die by the 3, and while Oats can certainly point to some defensive possessions that he’d probably like to have back (like most Alabama games), he’ll rest easy knowing that Thursday night’s performance was living by the 3 in the best possible way.
Regardless of what happens the rest of the way, that 3-point mark in a game of that significance will live in Alabama basketball lore. Sooner or later, we’ll need to have the conversation about where Sears fits in Tide lore and if any player in program history has a better argument for “Alabama’s G.O.A.T.” than he has.
In the postgame interview, Allie LaForce said to Sears, “you had to be out of body at some point when you were making all those 3s, how did it feel internally because watching, we were just mind-blown.”
Yep. And nobody’s mind should be blown if Sears and the Tide can still shoot against Duke.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
