AUBURN, Ala. — Nate Oats admits he didn’t do the best job drawing up No. 7 Alabama basketball’s game-winning basket at No. 1 Auburn on Saturday. Fortunately for the Crimson Tide, the head coach got something right on the play — he put the ball in the best player’s hands.
Inbounding the ball with a tie game and 14.7 seconds on the clock, Alabama guard Laboron Philon brought the ball up the court before passing the ball to Mark Sears on the elbow with 4.0 to play. From there, Sears faked a handoff back to Philon, drawing a defender away and opening up a land for the star point guard to sink a left-handed floater at the buzzer to clinch a 93-91 overtime win for the Tide.
“He bailed me out because that play design wasn’t all that great,” Oats said of Sears’ buzzer-beater. “The thing that was great about it was it was in a pretty good player’s hands.”
Sears was happy to have his coach’s back.
“I think it was a good play call because it caused a lot of confusion, and they didn’t know,” Sears said. “Earlier in the game, they were switching everything guard-to-guard. So I did a quick handoff to Labaron, they didn’t switch, and I was able to get downhill with my left hand, and I was able to get it off with enough time.”
Sears hit the most important shot of the game. However, it was an otherwise quiet scoring performance for the star guard. Sears’ buzzer-beater accounted for two of his nine points on the afternoon as Auburn did its best to take him out of the game, limiting him to 3 of 9 shooting from the floor, including just 1 of 4 from deep.
Don’t mistake the lack of points for a decrease in production. Despite scoring under double-digit points for the first time in 11 games, Sears played solid defense and led the team with seven assists. During his three seasons with Alabama, the Tide is now 10-0 when he records seven or more assists in a game.
“They were going to make sure he didn’t get anything easy,” Oats said. “They did a good job on him defensively. He stuck in there. His attitude was great, played hard for us on defense, got seven assists and only one turnover. When we needed him late, he came through.”
Alabama’s buzzer-beater over Auburn served as redemption for the Tide following its last-second loss at Tennessee a week ago. Oats took the blame for that defeat, claiming he failed his team by making substitution errors and not calling a timeout that would have prevented a five-second violation in the final seconds.
Over the past week, Alabama worked through several late-game sets in order to be prepared for similar scenarios moving forward.
“A tie game late with 14 seconds of overtime was not necessarily one that we’ve been through,” Oats said following Saturday’s win. “I knew I wanted to get the ball in [Sears’] hands, and we got it there.”
With the win, Alabama (24-7, 12-5) secured the No. 3 seed in next week's SEC tournament in Nashville, Tennessee. The Crimson Tide’s top-four status means it won’t have to play again until Friday in the tournament’s quarterfinal stage.
“Hopefully, this gives our guys some confidence heading into the SEC tournament,” Oats said. “You know we got the bye until Friday. We’ve got to get our legs back under us. We’ve got to get our confidence back, and I think this is a big start.”
