AUBURN, Ala. — The nets inside Neville Arena are still hanging from the rim.
After clinching the SEC regular-season title last weekend, Auburn displayed a new banner from the rafters and laid out white championship towels on every seat ahead of Saturday’s matchup against Alabama. The plan was to have a postgame ceremony with Bruce Pearl and company cutting down the nets in front of a dejected Crimson Tide.
That was until Mark Sears crashed the party.
The Alabama point guard sunk one of the biggest shots in IBOB history, reducing a raucous crowd to a stunned silence with a game-winning floater at the buzzer. The Tide’s 93-91 overtime win over the Tigers might not have impacted seeding or standings, but good luck telling anyone in this state that it was insignificant.
From Grant Nelson’s crimson crane celebration to Chad Baker-Mazara's flagrant 2 ejection, Saturday’s slugfest was pure cinema. And while the loss likely won’t prevent Auburn from earning the No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, let’s not pretend like the Tigers weren’t doing everything in their power to come away with the win.
Auburn started a banged-up Denver Jones, four days after he sat out a loss at Texas A&M with a soft-tissue injury in his right ankle. Jones logged 38 minutes against the Tide, more than any other Tiger outside of star forward Johni Broome, who saw the court for 43 of the game’s 45 minutes. The only Auburn starter who didn’t eclipse the 30-minute mark was Baker-Mazara, who was tossed from the game with 10:52 left in regulation after he deliberately elbowed Chris Youngblood in the back of the head.
Meaningless? It certainly didn’t seem that way Saturday.
“It looked to me like they were trying to get the win,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said of Auburn. “They brought their best guys. They didn’t sit Denver. Broome’s obviously playing well. He kind of killed us with 34 and eight, made some big shots. We won against them on their Senior Night, and I think we showed what we’re capable of being moving forward.”
Saturday’s win secured Alabama the No. 3 seed in next week’s SEC tournament, but other than that, the Tide left Neville Arena with the same postseason position it entered. Following the game, Oats was asked whether the win warranted Alabama a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. While he pointed out his team’s marquee wins over Auburn and Houston away from home, even he knows the Tide’s seven losses will be hard for the committee to ignore.
Still, there’s a reason Auburn tried so hard to knock Alabama back down to the mat Saturday, and it’s not purely based on pride or postgame celebrations. The Tigers missed a golden opportunity to deliver what could have served as a knockout blow to their archrivals. Now, college basketball might end up paying the price.
Instead of heading into postseason play with losses in five of its final seven games, Alabama all of a sudden has the momentum it needs to spark another tournament run.
The Tide already overcame a few of its demons during Saturday’s win.
Let’s start with Nelson, who led Alabama with 23 points and eight rebounds following a string of five straight forgettable performances. His posterizing dunk over Auburn’s Dylan Cardwell might have been one of the game’s biggest highlights. However, it’s his 3 of 6 showing from beyond the arc that provides the most encouragement moving forward.
Heading into Saturday’s game, Nelson hadn’t made a 3 in any of his previous six outings, going 0-for-6 during that span. While the graduate forward is shooting a career-worst 24.7% from deep this season, perhaps his hot hand against Auburn might reignite the production Alabama saw from him at this time last year.
“We need him playing aggressive,” Oats said after the game. “He was one of the best players in the country last year in March when we made a Final Four run. Hopefully, we get Grant Nelson in March back for another March run for us.”
Alabama also looks on its way toward solving some of its late-game deficiencies. A week after throwing away a four-point lead in the final 30 seconds against Tennessee, the Tide executed well enough down the stretch to end up on the right side of a buzzer on Saturday.
Sears’ game-winner capped off a quiet 9-point performance on the stat sheet. However, the star point guard found other ways to influence the game, chipping in seven assists while turning the ball over just once over 40 minutes. Alabama is now 10-0 in games when Sears has contributed seven or more assists over the past three seasons. That’s a good stat to keep in mind as teams continue to look for ways to limit him as a scorer.
“I just kept talking to him. ‘Be a great teammate. Play hard on D.’ We’re not worried about scoring points,” Oats said of his message to Sears. “We’ve established that as a team. The team met. We’re just trying to be the hardest-playing, best mudita team on the floor.”
Sears brought the mudita and the momentum Saturday. There’s no telling where that will take Alabama moving forward. Who knows? Maybe the Tide might be the team getting to trim the nets over the next few weeks.
Drink of the week — Buzzerbeater
A complex plan isn’t always necessary if you have the right ingredients. That’s why I’m keeping things simple when dedicating a drink to Sears’ game-winning shot.
Following Alabama’s win, Oats said the star point guard bailed him out of a lackluster play call on Alabama’s final possession.
“The thing that was great about it was it was in a pretty good player’s hands,” Oats said, referencing his star guard.
Like Sears, the Tito’s Buzzer Beater won’t let you down when your’e in a pinch. The simple cocktail is essentially just a vodka soda, using 1.5 ounces of Tito’s vodka, four ounces of sparkling water and a squeeze of lime. However, sometimes that’s all you need.
Cheers!
(Commercial break: My drink of the week section is now sponsored by my friends at Session Cocktails in Tuscaloosa. Session has been a mainstay in Tuscaloosa’s cocktail scene since 2019 and offers some of the tastiest drinks in town. Stop by and tell them I said hi!)
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