Disappointing Road Trip Leaves Alabama Basketball Reeling
Alabama basketball just finished a horrific road trip, and the Tide now must regroup as conference play nears.
Crimson Tide basketball finished its mini-road trip with a 66-56 loss at Oregon, one that came on the heels of a 77-68 defeat at Texas. While the Crimson Tide entered this two-game set at 4-2, and riding high after some nice wins, these two losses have brought the team crashing back down to earth.
The biggest takeaway from these two games is that Alabama need to win at least one of these games, and lost both of them. Simply put, this road trip was fairly disastrous. With losses to all of the quality opponents on its schedule thus far, the Crimson Tide are almost out of opportunities to make a good impression before conference play starts.
Part of the cruel reality of these two games is that the Tide looked fine in both of them. Neither Texas nor Oregon are elite competition (though Oregon looks like a sure tournament team), but Alabama played each team fairly well. Both games were much closer than the final scores indicated, as Alabama was a few key possessions away from victory in each.
So the problem wasn’t that Alabama got blown off the floor. This team is clearly well-coached, and came tantalizingly close to victory in Eugene on Sunday night. The problem is that Alabama has played three teams that can be classified as “good” (Dayton, Texas, Oregon) and has lost all three games.
As good as the Tide have looked for stretches, Alabama basketball has to start actually winning some games if they want to have an outside shot at the tournament in March.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear path to getting better in the short team. The talent should ramp up considerably next season when the team’s historically great recruiting class arrives, but the lack of skill on this team has become problematic.
This isn’t a shot at any of the players on the team — I’ve been very impressed by how they’ve played — but Bama is lacking that final piece to help them put the finishing touches on their late comebacks.
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There’s still plenty of time in the season. Alabama basketball also still has plenty of chances to prove themselves against teams like Florida and Kentucky in conference play. However, the Tide can only afford to lose so many games, and racked up two in that column over the last 10 days.
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