The Extra Point: What's Wrong With Alabama Basketball's Defense?
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00:00 For Bama Central.com, this is the extra point. I'm Matthew Gibson alongside Will Miller.
00:05 Alabama basketball is coming off a disgusting 117-95 loss to Kentucky at Rupp Arena.
00:11 Will, I had a front row seat to the Carnage in Lexington.
00:14 What were your takeaways from just a really grotesque performance from Alabama?
00:19 I think that's a really good word for it.
00:23 It's difficult when you go on the road and play a ranked team anywhere,
00:28 but that's one of the premier environments to do it.
00:30 So out of the gates, it's just already really hard to win there.
00:33 And then you're missing Latrell Reitzel, one of the best perimeter guys on the team,
00:38 and who really has been what some would say an unexpected bright spot.
00:42 He's missing. Nate Oaks said he wouldn't have made up for the deficit,
00:45 but still, you know, he's a key piece that's missing.
00:48 And so you're already playing short-handed. You're going into a tough environment.
00:51 Had to bring your A game, and on the defensive side of the ball,
00:54 as has been often the case this year, that just didn't happen.
00:58 And it starts from there.
01:01 It culminates in, you know, inability to compensate for, like,
01:05 the transition game, turnovers, things of that nature.
01:08 It affects the whole game. I think it did it again.
01:10 Another subpar defensive performance, and that's one of the main things.
01:14 Kentucky's up and down this year, particularly in league play,
01:17 but again, it's just incredibly difficult to beat them at home.
01:20 You've got to be going on all cylinders to do it,
01:23 and really dialed into all phases of the ball, and I don't think Alabama was.
01:27 Yeah, and for one, I really don't think you can fault the Alabama coaching staff
01:31 necessarily too much. Again, they constructed this roster,
01:35 but this is not something that is necessarily in their control.
01:38 I mean, they're doing, from the outside looking,
01:40 it looks like they're doing just about everything they can to get these guys to guard,
01:44 and they just don't have the ability to. And I've seen a lot of Alabama fans,
01:48 though, out there, like, "Oh, well, why does an Alabama switch to a different type of defense?"
01:52 But if you can't successfully run a basic man-to-man,
01:56 how are you going to run anything else? And that's been Alabama's issue.
01:58 They're just getting beat off the ball. They're getting beat around screens.
02:03 They can't stay in front of everybody, and this particularly was Kentucky.
02:07 Kentucky also, got to give credit to them, they shot the lights off the ball.
02:11 I mean, it was just a fantastic performance from them.
02:14 I mean, Justin Edwards was 10 for 10 from the field,
02:17 and Tony Reed said 24 points of his own.
02:19 I mean, it's not necessarily something that I think Alabama fans don't know at this point.
02:26 They know the defense is bad, but you also know that your offense is still one of the best in the country.
02:30 And after this loss, you only drop one spot in the A-People.
02:33 And you've got a game versus Ole Miss coming up at the Pavilion on Wednesday,
02:36 and after that, Tennessee comes home to Tuscaloosa for College Game Day on Saturday.
02:42 So they've still got some things to look forward to,
02:44 but I really don't know if this is something that is not well known to the entire one roster,
02:51 coaching staff, and even fan base at this point.
02:53 Alabama's defense is just bad. It is what it is.
02:57 Yeah, I hate to say it just that out of hand, but it's hard to suggest anything else at this point.
03:05 When issues are present in November, they're just issues.
03:08 When they're still present in February, it might just be part of what the situation is at that point.
03:13 And you still score 95 points when you're getting dropped.
03:18 So that's an encouraging sign about the offense still being probably tops in the country,
03:22 objectively speaking, if you're watching just the sheer ability of this team to score points.
03:29 And the program's like, what, 10 and 60 at Rupp or close to there?
03:34 So this is a program that just has not won in that venue, not that a lot of people have.
03:39 And Kentucky's turned some things around since that Gonzaga loss,
03:42 which I was very surprised they took that loss.
03:44 But it seems like they've turned some things around.
03:46 And they've been, like I said during conference play, kind of streaky.
03:49 But if they're going to get back to their winning ways, watch out.
03:55 And they've been a strong defensive team the years they were successful.
03:58 You think back half a decade to the Kentucky teams that used to run the show in Nashville every year
04:02 as a shining example of just really suffocating defensive teams.
04:06 That's not who Alabama is ever going to be, particularly not this year,
04:10 nor is that a realistic standard to set.
04:12 But I mean, if that's what it takes to win, if you're a fan of the team,
04:16 you at least want to see that kind of effort.
04:19 Yeah. For Alabama Central dot com, this has been The Extra Point.
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