Points in the Paint — Why has Alabama basketball not seemed to hit its stride?

Welcome back to our semi-regular-ish data dive into ‘Bama basketball. This week, rather than droll recitation of stats, we’re going to spend our time a little more productively and do a deep dive into what ails Alabama.

The Tide are 17-3 and sitting at No. 4 in the country. As a team, they’ve never fallen below 11th all year, analytically or in the polls. The Tide is currently in sole possession of 2nd place in a brutal SEC where five Top 20 teams already sport at least a trio of conference losses. The Tide has faced the nation’s No. 2 SOS, became the first team in history to beat UK and UNC on their home floor in the same season, and have a national-best four wins over the KP top 20.

So why does everything feel so…wonky? Like it’s not quite right?

It’s hard to argue that a title contender should look like this: routinely playing down to T3 and even a T4 opponent, no-shows at home, allowing the league’s smallest team to dominate the offensive glass, a frustrated coach having to still call out his team for poor defense, a benching of an All-American super-senior point guard, and so many other dynamics that are off.

What is it? Well, after a thorough parsing of the numbers, here’s what is bleeding through — in many cases, howling — out of the data sets. There’s a lot to cover, so we won’t do a lot of preamble before these. The conclusions are fairly self-evident. We’re going to make comparisons to last year’s team, another defensively-challenged unit that had to rely on hustle and scoring to overcome their liabilities. It’s a fair comparison with the core roster continuity too, since a Final Four appearance is, at a minimum, the expectation for this club.

It’s easy to say that “the defense needs work,” or “the perimeter game is down.” But, what does that specifically entail? Here’s what it means:

Free Throws on both ends

Last season, Alabama was above-average in getting to the line. This season, they’ve elevated that to elite-tier (19th). The Tide was also elite in making teams earn their scoring, with only 28.8% of opponent points coming from the stripe. This year, however, even though ‘Bama’s scoring from the stripe is up, so too is opponent scoring from the line. Alabama enjoyed a 12% swing from its FT scoring vs. the opponent in ‘24. This season, its foes have narrowed that gap into almost tossup category, with ‘Bama’s line scoring outpacing opponents by less than 5%.

That doesn’t mean that the Tide is fouling more (indeed, they are surrendering about three fewer FTA per game over 2024), what it does mean is that Alabama is fouling the wrong teams and especially the wrong players. It’s giving more free points to good shooters this year on fewer attempts. Meanwhile, Alabama is getting to the line about four times more per game, but is shooting a worse percentage than it did last year, thus negating any sort of advantage it’s built for itself.

So, it doesn’t matter how much better the Tide is at getting to the charity stripe if it can’t hit them, and it also defensively collapsing and sending the opponent’s best shooters to the stripe — much less doing so with a frozen clock. That’s how you lose close games against other elite teams. It’s going to come back to bite the Tide too, unless it’s cleaned up on both ends.

The Rim Defense That Wasn’t

Cliff Omoruyi was one of the Tide’s bigger offseason acquisitions, and seemed to fill that big, strong body Alabama was missing after Bediako’s departure. He’s made an impact for sure, but mostly in ways that aren’t evident on the stat sheet. In those tangible measures that affect games in ways that you can see, Alabama has not taken a defensive leap into even respectable territory in defending the paint. No, ‘Bama has improbably gotten worse, and often significantly so.

Alabama is among the nation’s worst 20% in lane scoring allowed — teams are netting 54% of the their points inside the paint, and it is in the Bottom 10 nationally in lane shots per game allowed (21.5 attempts per game, 364th). If that weren’t bad enough, it has only nominally improved its ability to stop teams from cleaning up the offensive glass (they are still allowing 30% OREB percentage, which is average nationally vs. last season’s 31.6%), and they’re not putting shots into the third row when teams come inside for layups (4.4 blocks per game this year vs. T1 vs. 5.1 blocks per game last season vs. T1).

Teams are having their way inside on ‘Bama — even smaller rosters that have no business being that productive.

Some is the footwork of the bigs. Some is the guards losing contain. Some is Grant being dominated on the blocks by more athletic power forwards. Some is Cliff being on the bench too often, both for foul trouble as well as reasons we still don’t understand. Some is Jarin getting stuck in maple syrup as his man blows by him repeatedly. Some is Sherrell not living up to his hype as a raw freshman prospect. And a lot of it is missing Nick Pringle. He was a strong, athletic presence that made the Tide’s interior defense better.

This is a team-wide dysfunction, and you can’t soft-peddle it either: This team sucks inside of 12 feet because they don’t defend for 24 seconds, are stuck on the bench in foul trouble, or come down the floor already disinterested in two-way play.

Someone has to step up in the post consistently, stay out of foul trouble, and actually hustle when the shot is in the air. Rebounding is solely positioning and effort, and ‘Bama is not producing nearly good enough hustle, fight, or playing in position. For all of his mercurial nature and frequent foul outs, Nick Pringle gave you that athleticism and effort that no one on this roster has been able to match yet and still be able (or be permitted to) stay on the court for extended playing time.

Nate Oats has been threatening some benchings over it, and it finally happened vs. LSU. But it should have happened two months ago and this would perhaps not be an issue with just a dozen games remaining.

The wrong people shooting the deep ball

Alabama is a bit of a mystery: a three-point shooting team that can’t really shoot, and a three-point shooting team missing its best perimeter shooter. Any look at the Tide’s perimeter game has to start with the brutal absence of Latrell Wrightsell Jr. Trelly was by far the Tide’s best perimeter shooter, both last season and in his eight appearances this season (though lil’ Aden Holloway seems poised to flirt with or surpass Trelly’s accuracy this year).

Despite a deeper backcourt this year, Alabama isn’t launching it more from the perimeter. Last year, the Tide averaged 29.9 3PA per game. This year? Just 30.5. But Alabama was far more productive last year from deep. In 2024, 37.5% of the Tide’s scoring came from the perimeter — 19th in the country. This year, that number has plummeted to just about 32% of all scoring, making Alabama a below-average team in deep ball production (228th).

That means the Tide is averaging 3.2 fewer made threes per contest in 2025, while attempting the same number of shots as last year. It’s 32.5% accuracy is 255th in the country.

Why is that though? These guys are paid, so we can and do name names now.

Alabama is wasting possessions by giving every player the green light to shoot. Because, frankly, Jarin Stevenson has not earned it, and must think every game is the Elite Eight where he’s suddenly going to be a perimeter terror. As a result he’s averaging almost two more 3PA per SEC game over last season, but at the same time is shooting a miserable 22.8%.

What does bad shooting do? It has all sorts of knock-on effects. It means his floor shooting is down, his ability to get to the line per-possession is down (where his shooting at the stripe has also worsened), and his total offensive contribution to win share dropped from a meager 5.3% to 5.0%. He is, by far and away, the single worst player in ‘Bama’s core rotation (only Sherrell has contributed less, but he only plays 4-6 minutes a night). And wasting 12-15% of your total perimeter shots with those desperate heaves is near-criminal…especially when it is exacerbated by poor free throw shooting and spotty defensive efforts.

I don’t want to pick on him, truly. But he’s not earning his minutes, and the numbers tell what your eyes do: it’s a problem.

He’s not alone in contributing to the three-ball malaise. though. Mark Sears’ three-point shooting has also slipped a bit. But the real crux lies with the other guys launching them — Grant Nelson, Labaron Philon, and Aiden Sherrell, who are combining to launch almost 11 per game. Not a single one of them shoots above 28% from the perimeter. Not one.

Needless to say, when you have four bad shooters chucking up eephuses on nearly half of your perimeter attempts, that is not winning basketball. It’s hurt ‘Bama’s bottom line, its productivity, and — combining their made baskets to total possessions — results in wasted trips on almost 20% of all possessions.

Aggression is one thing. Playing three-for-two is smart analytical basketball. But the right players have to be shooting too, and they’re simply not. This is untenable.

We could spill enough ink to write a fairly dense coffee table book about the pros and cons of this roster, what has gone right as well as what has gone wrong. But those are three demonstrable areas for improvement that Alabama can make literally anytime they choose to do so — both individually, and as a team.

It doesn’t have to be this way. This team hasn’t even begun to play a complete game yet. They just have to want to. We shall see on Tuesday whether Coach Oats’ professorial instruction to Mssrs Sears and Omoruyi got through to everyone else…or whether he has lost them for good.

Hope for the best

Roll Tide