Alabama basketball handled business against North Dakota, 91 to 62, before a tough stretch begins.
The sights and sounds of college hoops were back inside Coleman Coliseum with another hyped up season. The Tide were forced to have only nine scholarship players, with Latrell Wrightsell Jr., Keitenn Bristow, and Aden Holloway out with injuries and considered day-to-day per head coach Nate Oats.
“For the first game, playing as many freshmen as we did, as many minutes as we did, a lot of good stuff we can get out of this game,” said Oats.
The month of November is a gauntlet for the Tide, and a tune-up like this, especially where the new guys got tons of minutes, was huge for confidence moving forward.
Houston Mallette, after the medical redshirt was given, put it all on the line on the court with 15 points and had 4 out of the 11 offensive rebounds that the team had, and shot 2-4 from deep.
“He plays so hard. He has to ask to come out of the game he gives so hard. We have a lot of guys that need to learn how to play as hard as Houston plays, and we’d be a better team if they did,” said Oats on Mallette’s impact.
The Tide came out hot in the first half from behind-the-arc shooting 7-16 from deep, it struggled like it did in the second half last week versus Furman and shot 1-11.
Labaron Philon will be the alpha of this team
With the Tide losing Mark Sears, it needed a guy to be a go-to scorer and get “his” and Labaron Philon did just that with a career-high 22 points on the night, which will probably be only a matter of games until it’s broken again.
“It was really great to get out there and play for coach Oats again. He coaches me so hard,” said Philon.
Within just the first four minutes of the game, he had eight of the first 10 points and showed off the new and improved outside shot that NBA scouts had told him to work on throughout the draft process, and was able to finish 2-4 from the outside.
Philon dished the rock as well with eight assists and finished with a +/- of +29.
Freshmen shined in debuts
With the injuries allowed, the new guys were able to play more minutes with Amari Allen getting his first career start in his first career game in Tuscaloosa and shined, posting a near triple-double and was all over the place with 12 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and was very aggressive, driving down hill to the basket.
Davion Hannah, who Oats has said is the defensive lockdown of this team, was able to show the athleticism with a posterizer dunk in transition that got the fans out of their seats in the second half. Hannah finished with 9 points, but had 4 careless turnovers trying to do too much on the offensive end.
London Jemison, who was the highest ranked coming out of the class, was productive but struggled from three 1-6, but was very active with 2 offensive rebounds to go with 12 points, and added some size on the wing.
Defense was very active
Entering the season, the Tide worked early in the Summer on the defense with assistant coach Brian Adams, and flashes were shown all night long with good first-shot defense, but they have to clean up the glass better with 7 offensive rebounds given up.
Aiden Sherrell provided the Tide with much-needed rim protection in year two, with four blocks.
“Loved Aiden’s rim protection. We’ve been on him to protect the rim; he did exactly what we wanted with him on that end,” said Oats.
The Wisconsin Freshmen Allen and Hannah were active all night with tons of deflections and combined for 6 out of the 8 steals on the night and were first and second for the hard hat.
Next for Alabama basketball: at St. John’s (Sat., Nov. 8 at Noon EST)
Next for North Dakota: vs. UC Riverside (Thurs., Nov. 6 at 8 p.m. EST)