Alabama polished off a perfect foreign tour Friday with an 89-77 victory over the Chinese National team in Paris. The victory wraps up the Crimson Tide's three-game slate in Europe as it began its tour with a 108-64 victory over the Spain Select Team on Monday before taking down Lithuania B National Team 120-61 on Wednesday.
"I want us to be the hardest-playing team on the floor every night out there," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said during a post-game interview. "Then I want us to be getting better every game. I thought we got better every game on this trip. So let's get better every day in practice, every game."
Freshman forward Brandon Miller led Alabama with 21 points, including 16 in the second half. The five-star prospect averaged 22.0 points over the Crimson Tide's three games this week.
Miller was one of five Alabama players in double figures. Sophomore guard Nimari Burnett won the Hard Hat Award, recording 13 points and four rebounds. Meanwhile, freshman forward Noah Clowney had a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds while juniors Darius Miles (11 points) and Mark Sears (10 points) also reached double-digit scoring.
Alabama shot 36.8% (28 of 76) from the field and just 18.6% (6 of 32) from beyond the arc but was able to overpower the Chinese by taking advantage of a 47-36 advantage on the boards, including a big 23-10 edge on rebounds. Alabama also forced China to 21 turnovers while only losing the ball 11 times.
Game highlights
— Alabama scored the game's first seven points before China responded with a 17-4 run to take a 17-11 lead midway through the first half.
— Alabama responded by scoring nine of the next 13 points to close the game at 21-20 after the first quarter.
— Burnett and Dominick Welch hit back-to-back 3s to give the Tide the lead for good at 31-27 with just over five minutes remaining before halftime
— The third quarter saw the Tide catch fire, outscoring China 24-19 to take a double-digit lead at 65-54.
— Alabama stretched its lead to as many as 20 points in the fourth, before settling for the 12-point win.
— Welch also had a solid individual performance as he added eight points and seven rebounds on the night.
— Six of Clowney's game-high 10 rebounds came on the offensive end of the floor.
— Oats started three different starting lineups on the Tide's foreign tour.
— Burnett earned the Hard Hat Award, joining Miller (Lithuania) and Rylan Griffen (Spain) as the recipients of the award in the three contests
Information from this story was obtained from a recent Alabama Athletics release.