No. 1 Alabama disappointingly concluded its season on Friday with a 71-64 loss to No. 5 San Diego State in Louisville, Kentucky.
Let’s dive into the film room to analyze Alabama’s 2-point shooting struggles from its Sweet 16 defeat.
What went wrong
Early into the first half, it was evident that it was one of those Alabama outings. The defense was superb as usual, but San Diego State’s strength and experience gave the Crimson Tide plenty of trouble on the offensive end.
Alabama shot 27.6% from the field, 9.1% from beyond the arc, and turned the ball over seven times in the first half. Typically when Alabama is struggling from beyond the arc, there’s a level of comfort in its ability to efficiently score at the rim. Friday, it shot an abysmal 38.9% on 2-pointers in the first half, which was similar to its road defeat to Tennessee on Feb. 15.
“Their physicality definitely bothered us in the half-court, for sure,” head coach Nate Oats told the media following Friday's game. “They got us off our drives… we needed to make better rim decisions, but they are a tough, physical, big, strong and experienced team.”
Out of the break, Alabama was able to generate early offensive possessions, attack the basket, find wing shooters, and clean up the offensive glass.
On this possession, Jahvon Quinerly comes off the Charles Bediako back screen then gets the defender on his shoulder as he takes it all the way to the rim.
Midway through the second half, the Crimson Tide took a nine-point lead, but the gritty Aztecs were able to stall Alabama’s offensive possessions and lean on 5-foot-10 senior guard Darrion Trammell for crucial pull-up jumpers to regain the lead.
“Throughout the whole week, I’ve been prepping for them,” Trammell said. “I knew what kind of coverages they ran as far as ball screens and that’s something I was working on all week.”
When the game began to slow back down in the final 10 minutes, Alabama settled into its half-court possession. As seen above. Bediako sets a rub screen for Quinerly, and Trammell gets caught attempting to go over the screen, but San Diego State has athletic enough bigs to switch ball-screen actions – similar to Houston.
On the very next possession after the baseline out-of-bounds entry from Alabama, Quinerly attempts to cut across to the left side of the rim with Bediako occupying the right, though, he’s quickly met with two defenders that both block his shot attempt.
San Diego State took advantage of Quinerly’s lack of size and short jumps on rim attempts. The senior guard scored 10 points on 30 percent shooting on 2-point attempts (3 of 10) with the Aztecs’ defense blocking four of his shots in the second half alone.
Additionally, Miller scored 9 points, shooting 20 percent (2 of 9) on 2-point attempts and 10 percent (1 of 10) from 3 in 30 minutes of action. He was unable to generate mismatches, given San Diego State’s switching scheme and ultra-aggressive paint defense.
Some of Miller’s processing in this game was shaky at best. He drove into some crowded windows, made a few predictable passing reads and settled for out of the ordinary contested jumpers, especially late in the game.
