Game Thread: Alabama @ Mississippi State

ReturnToGlory said:

Ben Howland has made a living at playing defense and executing half-court offense. Thought we should have pushed the tempo. Of course, we tend to turn it over on fast breaks some too. Always an ugly looking game but tried and true formula for Howland.

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I think we should try to play more uptemp and use transition. We run the floor better than we play in the half court. It's true we are sloppy in transition and have turnovers, but this team has the athletes to pull it off he we could clean up the passing and lane running.

BamaMoon said:

I think we should try to play more uptemp and use transition. We run the floor better than we play in the half court. It's true we are sloppy in transition and have turnovers, but this team has the athletes to pull it off he we could clean up the passing and lane running.

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Petty might find some open 3s in transition too.

Blindside13 said:

Another winnable game, Bama could not afford to lose. I hope I am wrong but I still don't see Bama making the tournament.

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You'll make the tourney - don't worry - the SEC is just a tough conference this year so there's going to be frustrating close losses like this one.

Your main goal right now is to try to get a double-bye in the upcoming SEC Tourney by staying in the top 4 of the conference.

Blindside13 said:

Another winnable game, Bama could not afford to lose. I hope I am wrong but I still don't see Bama making the tournament.

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I think if we win our remaining home games, we sneak in.

TideEngineer08 said:

I think if we win our remaining home games, we sneak in.

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Hope so we have beaten LSU and Fl, but the hogs and vols are both going to be tough outs.I don't see us stealing a road game. Tonight was the best opportunity for that.

TideEngineer08 said:

I think if we win our remaining home games, we sneak in.

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I think so too. Which makes Saturday's game very, very important.

MSU coach did a good job.

Petty, Jones and Ingram combined for a total of 6 points; need scoring from one or two of these guys every game. Ingram only played 12 minutes with 2 first half fouls. He and Jones looked like they had no confidence in taking a shot.

Too many times a player will penetrate to the free throw line and maybe a little deeper and end up with no defender in their face but they still won't take the shot. They'll pass it back out and push the shot clock or end up with a turnover. This drives me nuts. When the defense is taking away the three and packing the bigs under the basket to take away the drive to the rim, a pull up jump shot is sometimes the highest percentage shot to take.

Bama could not score in the last 4 minutes while MSU seemed to score on every trip with maybe one only being a one-point trip while the rest were 2's or 3's.

Passing wasn't there tonight. Back to too much dribbling and a little too much watching Sexton.

It looked like we had found something with Giddens posting up Adu. Giddens had 11 points and was dominating in the paint before he fouled out on that phantom 5th foul. When Giddens went out we lost our inside scoring threat. I don’t think we played terrible. MSU is an 18 win team with a very good coach. It’s not like we played an awful team tonight. Combine that with us not hitting any shots.


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i'd say this is one of the bigger things that puzzles me. We rarely take jump shots inside the 3 point line. it's there. we have way too many drives that ends in turnovers/offensive fouls and missed layups in traffic. Also, at this point you know what you are going to get out of Petty. Either made or missed 3's. if thats all he's capable of, either bring him off the bench or run plays for 3 point shots instead of random contested 3's. he's attempted 30 FT's all season. Thats not a good sign for a starter with his athletic ability. I still say we get in which is the goal. After that it's a new season.

day-day said:

MSU coach did a good job.

Petty, Jones and Ingram combined for a total of 6 points; need scoring from one or two of these guys every game. Ingram only played 12 minutes with 2 first half fouls. He and Jones looked like they had no confidence in taking a shot.

Too many times a player will penetrate to the free throw line and maybe a little deeper and end up with no defender in their face but they still won't take the shot. They'll pass it back out and push the shot clock or end up with a turnover. This drives me nuts. When the defense is taking away the three and packing the bigs under the basket to take away the drive to the rim, a pull up jump shot is sometimes the highest percentage shot to take.

Bama could not score in the last 4 minutes while MSU seemed to score on every trip with maybe one only being a one-point trip while the rest were 2's or 3's.

Passing wasn't there tonight. Back to too much dribbling and a little too much watching Sexton.

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State is on a 4 game winning streak right now. Having said that if the refs had not decided to take over the game we win that. Some of the calls happen right when we are getting momentum. Such as the bogus offensive foul on Key when the defender is clearly pulling his arm. The no call when Sexton was mugged you know State would have gotten that call. Not sure how coaching was the problem. Other than making their shots for them and putting on some stripes not sure what else AJ could have done. Think its been said already THE SEC IS GOOD THIS YEAR. If we make it to the tournament we will be battle tested because of our conference, this is not something you could say in the past.

Bazza said:

You'll make the tourney - don't worry -

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Get real.

ReturnToGlory said:

Ben Howland has made a living at playing defense and executing half-court offense. Thought we should have pushed the tempo. Of course, we tend to turn it over on fast breaks some too. Always an ugly looking game but tried and true formula for Howland.

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I went to the game last night. You can't push the tempo if you don't get turnovers on defense and rebounds. We lost both battles last night to a smaller team although to be fair hall is playing with 1 hand. The officials have decided nothing is a foul underneath the basket and we simply got punked again by physical play. We have to decide whether we are going to match their play or sit around and cry about not making the tourney again.

RTR91 said:

That's easy to say until Giddens fouls out on a bogus call. The officials were consistently inconsistent last night.

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I agree on that call, but we know how the officials are going to call the game and we have to realize either we compete or we lose. We didn't play well at the end of the 1st half and the beginning of the 2nd. Our defensive for looks OK on paper, but they were driving to the basket at will. They ran the same play all night and we never seemed to want to defend them on it. There was poor rotation on defense all night. It is crunch time. We can't afford any more sub par efforts.

I don't understand why we shoot so many 3s. We were 3/22 from behind the arc and are one of the worse (if not the worse) 3 point shooting team in the conference. That can't be our strategy going forward. The spacing was bad on the set play when we were down 54-55. It's true that it probably should have been a foul when Sexton was contacted in the lane but the defenders would not have been there with better spacing. Then MSU scores easily on their set play. That pretty much decided the game..

RTR91 said:

That's easy to say until Giddens fouls out on a bogus call. The officials were consistently inconsistent last night.

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Giddens is a fouling machine. He commits more fouls per minute than anyone I've seen. Yea, the call you're referring to probably shouldn't have been called but he's always in foul trouble over legitimate calls. He gets at least 1 offensive foul for moving screen per game..

CrimsonForce said:

I don't understand why we shoot so many 3s. We were 3/22 from behind the arc and are one of the worse (if not the worse) 3 point shooting team in the conference. That can't be our strategy going forward. The spacing was bad on the set play when we were down 54-55. It's true that it probably should have been a foul when Sexton was contacted in the lane but the defenders would not have been there with better spacing. Then MSU scores easily on their set play. That pretty much decided the game..

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Yeah, I really thought that 3 petty hit was going to get him going. He followed it up with a really bad decision with his deep 3. You don’t shoot a heat check until you’ve knocked down at least 2 in row. We made some really BAD decisions down the stretch. It really hurt us when Giddens fouled out. We had found a mismatch inside.


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Agree. We needed to go inside, but some reason we didn't attempt to drive to the basket all that much. Sexton was the only one who tried. Ingram needs to come off the bench. He needs to get back into some kind of rhythm. he turns down too many shots. He is also a good rebounder, but was terrible last night.

Rama Jama said:

I went to the game last night. You can't push the tempo if you don't get turnovers on defense and rebounds. We lost both battles last night to a smaller team although to be fair hall is playing with 1 hand. The officials have decided nothing is a foul underneath the basket and we simply got punked again by physical play. We have to decide whether we are going to match their play or sit around and cry about not making the tourney again.

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Dazon being in foul trouble really hurt our rebounding as well. He is averaging 6 boards a game and he can really push the tempo after a rebound. I think that hurt us more than most people realize.


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