The 3-pointer: Three takeaways from No. 2 Alabama's win over Arkansas

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Another game and another sensational performance by Brandon Miller.

After setting a new career-high against South Carolina on Wednesday, the freshman forward followed it up with a game-high 24 points in No. 2 Alabama's 86-83 win over Arkansas. The win helps Alabama get a step closer to the share of the SEC regular-season title needing another win and a Texas A&M loss to claim sole possession. If that happens, it would be the second SEC regular-season title Alabama has won in the Nate Oats era and would clinch a No. 1-seed in the SEC Championship tournament.

Here are three takeaways from Saturday's victory.

Alabama's 43% shooting performance at South Carolina, didn't seem to make the trip back to Tuscaloosa on Saturday.

The Crimson Tide opened Saturday's matinee game against the Razorbacks with an ice-cold 0-for-7 from the field. Even when Alabama began to find the bottom of the net, it struggled to consistently score in the half-court. Arkansas forced Alabama to drive off of the 3-point line, but thanks to Mekahi Mitchell and Jalen Graham, the Razorbacks made it difficult to score in the paint as the duo combined for four blocks.

As a result, Alabama was a woeful 9-for-17 on layups despite going 3-for-3 on dunks. With the Crimson Tide going 1-for-10 from behind the arc, it struggled from the floor shooting just 33% in the first half.

"I don't think we played our best basketball," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said. "At the beginning of the game, we struggled to score for the first few minutes. We were down nine at the half. I think we made some easy adjustments in the second half."

Along with Alabama's struggles to take the lid off the basket, one of its most consistent offensive weapons, Mark Sears couldn't get it going from the field again on Saturday.

It's the third game in his last four outings where he scored 15 points or less — tallying 13 points in Saturday's win — despite playing 19 minutes or more in all four games. While he was able to finish the game in double digits, Sears scored nine points in the last five minutes of the game, all of which came from the free-throw line. Prior to his recent struggles, Sears was averaging 14 points per game which included back-to-back games where he shot 70% or better from the field.

Against Arkansas Sears was anything but efficient, going 2-for-7 shooting along with an 0-for-3 mark from downtown.

With the junior struggling Alabama had to turn to Jahvon Quinerly who spurred the second-half comeback for the Crimson Tide, tallying 12 of his 16 points along with seven assists and two rebounds in the final 20 minutes of play.

"We were 48 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor than when he was off the floor tonight," Oats said about Quinelry. "Offensively we were obviously a lot better with him on the floor tonight. A lot better."

One of the cornerstones of Alabama's offense was its Achilles Heel against Arkansas on Saturday.

The Crimson Tide, who has taken 845 3-pointers this season, couldn't find much success from deep. Against the Razorbacks, Alabama shot a pitiful 3-for-22 from behind the arc, marking its second-worst percentage of the season. The Crimson Tide's season low was when it shot 10.7% from deep against Longwood in its home opener.

"They have positional size everywhere, they're bigger, they didn't help as much and they didn't have to collapse as much," Oats said. "They can kind of build out on shooters, they're a really good defensive team. They've got shot-blocking at the rim and they want to take away 3-pointers kind of like what we want to do on defense, to be honest with you. We want to take away 3-pointers and push guys down to the shot blockers at the rim. ... We didn't do a good job early in the game of attacking their defense. I didn't think we made good decisions."

Similar to that night, Alabama had only had a few players cash in from deep in Sears, Noah Clowney and Rylan Griffen. On Saturday, Brandon Miller's 3-pointer with 3:08 in the game snapped a streak of 15 misses from beyond the arc for Alabama. He finished the game 1-for-6 despite leading the team in scoring for the second-consecutive game.

The only other player to score from deep was Dom Welch who nailed his lone attempt which came at the 10:11 mark in the first half. His basket snapped a streak of four consecutive misses to open the game for the Crimson Tide.

"We don't have to just win one way," Oats said. "For everybody that thinks that when we shoot the ball poorly from 3-point range we lose, we just shot 30% and won the game against a really good team. I think it gives us some confidence we can still win games where we're not making threes."