Beetle Bolden's 23 points help Alabama basketball beat Southern Miss

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas – Graduate senior Beetle Bolden scored a season-high 23 points, including 15 in the second half alone, and knocked down a career-best six three-pointers to lead the Alabama men’s basketball team past Southern Miss 83-66 on Friday night in the final game of the 2019 Bad Boy Mowers Battle 4 Atlantis.

“I thought our energy was really good out of the gate, which was good. I told these guys to make a character game and play as hard as you can," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said. "I thought it was a great start, we finished 5 of 5 at the rim in the first five minutes of the game then we went 0-for-1 over the next 15 minutes. I just didn’t think we would get the ball in the paint enough and settled for too many threes. Maybe our legs got a little tired, but we started to drag the ball back into the paint during the second half and I thought we did a better job with that.

"The 3 started to drop a little later. I thought overall our defense was a lot better tonight than previously, especially last night. Rebounding-wise we were even on the glass and I was hoping to win the rebounding battle but we have some guys who are banged up and who have some injuries but I was proud of them.”

With the win, the Crimson Tide (3-4) was one of the three teams to finish the event with a 1-2 record, joining Iowa State and No. 11 Oregon with identical marks. Unranked Michigan defeated No. 8 Gonzaga to claim the tournament championship, while No. 6 North Carolina bettered the Ducks to earn third place. In all, this year's field featured five of the eight teams among the top-15 in the nation, while the Wolverines, which entered the week receiving votes to be ranked, will undoubtedly make their debut in the new poll, which will be announced on Monday.

Bolden finished the night hitting 6-of-8 three-pointers – hitting all four of his attempts in the second half – on his way to his first 20-point scoring game as a member of the Crimson Tide program and the fifth in his career. Entering the contest, he had made a total of six threes in the five games he has played this season.

In addition to Bolden’s scoring output, sophomore Kira Lewis Jr. added 20 points on an efficient 7-of-11 shooting from the floor and 4-of-7 from beyond the arc.

Junior John Petty Jr. hit double digits for the third-straight game in the Bahamas, as he collected 10 points and added a team-leading eight rebounds in the winning effort. Petty finished the tournament with 67 total points (22.3 ppg) throughout the three-game tournament, just shy of breaking the event’s total scoring record of 74 points by Seton Hall’s Myles Powell.

The report was obtained from a recent Alabama Athletics release.

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