No. 4/5 Alabama Defeats Memphis Tuesday Night Inside of Coleman Coliseum

Tuesday, December 13

Tuscaloosa, Ala.

8:00 p.m. CT

Alabama

9-1,0-0SEC

Memphis

8-3,0-0AAC

Memphis

Alabama

Photo by: Crimson Tide Photos

No. 4/5 Alabama Defeats Memphis Tuesday Night Inside of Coleman Coliseum

12/13/2022 11:54:00 PM | Men's Basketball

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Freshman Brandon Miller scored 24 points in the effort

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The No. 4/5 Alabama men's basketball team continued its winning ways as it defeated Memphis, 91-88, inside Coleman Coliseum on Tuesday night. With the win, the Crimson Tide improves to 9-1 on the season, which is the program's best start since the 2006-07 campaign.

Freshman Brandon Miller scored 21 of his team-leading 24 total points in the second half to lead four UA players in double digits. Mark Sears finished with 18 points to go along with a team-leading two steals, while Noah Clowney had 11 points and Jaden Bradley finished with 10 on the night.

Memphis (8-3) was led by Kendric Davis, who finished with 30 points to lead all scorers. DeAndre Williams added 15 points in the losing effort.

Head Coach Nate Oats Postgame Comments

"As far as tonight's game, this is a better Memphis team than last year's team, in my opinion. Penny (Hardaway) has done a really good job getting an older group and their veterans ready. Did you see how many seniors they played? One point during the second half for a while, we had four freshmen on the floor. We had various points we could have pulled away, and I thought we should have pulled away, and just couldn't get the stops we needed to. You have to give Memphis a ton of credit for hanging in there. They could have gone away when we were up nine and trying to push it to ten, but we just could never put them away. We didn't play great on offense for a large stretch of the game. Our defense was good to start, and then our defense kind of fell apart in the second half. But without class right now, I thought our student section was great. The crowd got super loud when we needed stops, sometimes we didn't get them, but I enjoyed the crowd's energy. In our defense, we gave up to many twos, but we did a decent job from three. They didn't hit a three until 0.4 seconds to go, so we did a decent job guarding the three-point line. Our free throw shooting was not good, obviously. I think we were 8-for-14 at some point, and we missed out first one at the start of the half. I told the guys, when you're locked in, you're locked in, and we've just got to get locked in earlier.

Last year we had two big wins with Gonzaga and Houston, then went to Memphis and lost and really played super lethargic. This was not one of our better performances tonight, but it's still good to come out with a win. You've got to give the guys a lot of credit, they got stops and scored when we needed too. Brandon was good in the second half, struggled early in the first half going three points to 21 the second half. Clowney got the hard hat again. So, we've got different guys stepping up and we need to get some other guys playing a little better but it's nice to have the depth we have you know with Nimari (Burnett) out with a surgery on his wrist. I thought Jaden Bradley did a pretty good job defensively at times and you know we obviously didn't do a great job on Davis he dropped 30 on us. But we'll give the guys tomorrow off to back after Thursday, go Thursday, Friday and get ready to play Gonzaga on Saturday, another big game and we have a lot of those on our schedule."

TEAM STATS

Brandon Miller collected his team-leading fourth game of 20 or more points on the year with his 24 Tuesday night, knocking down 7-of-13 from the field and 4-of-8 from beyond the arc
Noah Clowney pulled down a team-high nine rebounds, with Miller right behind with eight to lead the Tide to a 42-39 rebounding advantage
Jaden Bradley made his first career start in place of Nimari Burnett who was ruled out with a left wrist injury prior to the game
Bradley, Miller and Jahvon Quinerly led the Tide with five assists each to combine for 15 of UA's 17 assists on the night
The Tide's perimeter defense limited the Tigers to just one three on the night which came on the final shot of the game as Memphis finished hitting just 1-of-12 attempts from beyond the arc

FIRST HALF

Both teams were slow out of the gates on offense, as the Tide and Tigers combined to shoot a 7-of-20 to start the game
After Memphis jumped out to an early lead, the Crimson Tide used an 8-2 run over a three-minute span to take the lead for good
Noah Gurley provided a spark off the bench, scoring seven points to go along with four rebounds in the first 11 minutes of the game
The Crimson Tide dished out nine assists in the first half, with Jahvon Quinerly leading the way with three assists
Mark Sears led all scorers at the break with 12 first half points

SECOND HALF

Miller came out of the break strong offensively, scoring six points in his first five minutes of action
After trading baskets in the first 12 minutes of the half, Alabama was able to extend its lead to nine, 71-62, with 5:07 remaining
Memphis battled back with a 6-0 run, but two quick layups from Sears and Darius Miles helped Alabama retain its lead
The Tide closed out the game by making five of its last six from the field, fighting off a last-minute surge from Memphis to close out the win

UP NEXT

Alabama will face Gonzaga in C.M. Newton Classic at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Ala.
Tipoff is set for 12 p.m. CT and the game will be broadcast live on CBS.

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