TUSCALOOSA — Alabama basketball’s defense has had its ups and downs this season. The ups have seen the Crimson Tide improve its defensive metrics from a season ago. The downs have included career highs from several players the Tide has faced this season.
One of the more recent explosive performances against Alabama's defense came from. Mississippi State star guard Josh Hubbard. The sophomore went for 38 points against Alabama on Jan. 29. The Tide managed to take down Mississippi State 88-84, inside Humphery Coliseum, but it had no answer for the Bulldogs' leading scorer.
“He dropped 38 on us,” coach Nate Oats told reporters Tuesday. “We’ve given up too many career highs to guys. We gotta find a better matchup, find a better plan, do a better job with him because he’s killed us.”
Alabama will get another crack at Hubbard when it plays Mississippi State in a rematch Tuesday night. It will be the first time this season that Alabama has faced a player who scored a career-high for a second time, and Oats is determined to not let Hubbard pull off the feat again Tuesday.
“I would hope that there’s a sense of urgency to not give Hubbard another career high,” Oats said. “Maybe we’ll get somebody else in the SEC Tournament or NCAA Tournament, who knows. But yeah, 38 is far too many. So we’ve got to get anybody that’s matched on him to do a significantly better job than we did the first time.”
Hubbard is Mississippi State’s best scorer and takes a high volume of shots to get his points. This season he's averaging 17.9 points per game on just under 14 attempts. Against Alabama, he attempted a whopping 28 field goals, including 15 3-pointers. The stat line is relatively efficient given Hubbard’s final tally. The Bulldogs often lean on their best player to carry them when he gets going and he’s finished above 20 points twice since his career night against the Tide.
Alabama generated some strong defensive momentum in its last game, which was another rematch against a team it's faced this season. The Tide held Kentucky’s leading scorer Otega Oweh to just two points on 1 of 9 shooting. Oweh averages nearly 17 points per game and led the Wildcats with 21 the first time the two teams met. But he was far off that mark while also fouling out of the game as Alabama ran out 96-83 winners Saturday.
“Even if he hadn’t fouled out, he was 1-of-9 in 22 minutes,” Oats said after the game. “So even if he plays 30 minutes, he only had two points. So I thought we did a pretty good job. I think we’ve got enough versatility on defense that if our guys would get locked into the scouting report and play with max effort, we should be a significantly better defensive team than what we’ve shown in the past.”
As the Tide looks for a similar performance against Hubbard, Oats also stressed that Alabama has to find ways to slow Hubbard down while not letting Mississippi State’s other shotmakers generate points. The Bulldogs rank No. 26 in adjusted offensive efficiency according to KenPomcom. Forward KeShawn Murphy and guard Claudell Harris Jr. are both averaging north of 10 points per game, and Murphy scored 18 off the bench against Alabama the last time the two sides met.
“Are our guys smart enough to make the personnel adjustments and still not let somebody else get off?” Oats questioned. “You can’t swing the pendulum so far. You can always make sure somebody doesn’t score. Shoot, Steph Curry — somebody played a triangle-and-two [defense] and put two guys on him the whole time when he was in college. He didn’t score but the team got drilled.
“You can always make sure somebody doesn’t score but you can’t swing the pendulum can’t far. You’ve got to make things tough on him without making it too easy for the rest of the team and some other guys that are more than capable of scoring.”
Alabama made the necessary adjustments against Kentucky to stop a team’s star. But the Tide has also struggled against capable offenses with multiple scores this season. As recently as two games ago, Alabama allowed Missouri to average 1.4 points per possession. Forward Mark Mitchell finished that game with a career-high 31 points.
The Tide showed what a raised level of defense can mean for its success Saturday. How well it continues that play consistently will dictate the results it gets in its final four regular season games. In the rematch against Hubbard, Alabama has to find a way to slow him down while adjusting to what Mississippi State throws at it, as the Bulldogs try and reverse the result of the Jan. 29 matchup.
“We can’t give him what we gave him the first game,” Oats said. “That obviously didn’t work very well. So there’s gonna be some adjustments made. Obviously I’m sure they’re gonna make some adjustments. We did win so we exploited some stuff they did. I’m sure we’re gonna have to make adjustments to their adjustments as are they. These times you play them second — particularly when both teams are healthy and have pretty much the same roster like we’ll have. Definitely with Kentucky having so many guys out it’s just different rosters. We’ll get the same roster that they had the first time. So can we make adjustments for them?”
Alabama will face Mississippi State at 8 p.m. CT Tuesday inside Coleman Coliseum. The game will be televised on ESPN 2.
