SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports' Lindsay Schnell and Scott Gleeson discuss the week in college hoops. USA TODAY Sports
BIRMINGHAM — NBA officials from all across the country converged on Birmingham to see two of college basketball’s premier freshmen.
And in the battle projected NBA lottery picks, Texas’ 6-foot-11 big man Mohamed Bamba outpaced Alabama’s splashy Collin Sexton on both ends of the floor to send the Longhorns to a 66-50 victory Friday night in the third annual Vulcan Classic from a sold-out Legacy Arena in Birmingham.
“When you’re playing against a guy like Bamba, who’s projected to potentially be a lottery pick,” third-year Alabama head coach Avery Johnson said, “… we’ve got to be ready to make the right decisions with the basketball and make sure we keep the right focus, and play the right way. We just didn’t play the right way … on both ends of the floor tonight.”
Nearly 50 general managers and scouts representing 25 NBA teams were in attendance at the BJCC as Bamba controlled the rim offensively and defensively, often altering any Alabama attempt to score inside.
Bamba finished with 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting, 11 rebounds, and five blocks as the Longhorns (9-3) frustrated Alabama’s struggling offense much of the night, including multiple extended shooting droughts, the last of which was an 0-for-5 effort over a span of 5:14 in the game’s final 6 minutes.
“It was just us, we made bad decisions on the ball,” Tide freshman John Petty said. “We know (Bamba’s) coming to block the shots, we just didn’t think when we got to the rim.”
Petty led Alabama (8-4) with 14 points on 5-of-11 shooting while Sexton managed eight points, five rebounds and a team-high four assists, many of which went to junior center Daniel Giddens, who added 10 points and six rebounds.
Alabama shot a season-low 21-of-61 (34.4 percent) from the floor, including a combined 7-of-30 from everyone not named Giddens, Petty or Sexton.
“We just played bad tonight,” Petty said. “We had bad rhythm, we had bad spacing and we just had bad communication on both ends of the defense. Their defense really didn’t affect ours, it was just on us.”
Poor shooting, especially from beyond the 3-point line, continued to prove detrimental to Alabama mounting any sort of offensive consistency against a premier Texas defense.
The Tide made just 1 of 7 from 3-point range in the first half, and didn’t fair much better in the second before finishing the game 3-of-15 from deep.
“At this point I would have expected us to be a much better 3-point shooting team. We’ve struggled shooting the 3,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to figure out ways to generate more offense from behind the 3-point line.”