A vicious full-court press and high-powered offense led the Alabama men’s basketball team to a 82-54 season-opening win over Towson Friday night. The Crimson Tide forced 22 turnovers resulting in 34 points, many coming in the backcourt off traps by guards Levi Randolph and Justin Coleman.
“We’re excited to be able to get the college basketball season kicked off today,” Alabama coach Anthony Grant said. “I was really proud of the effort our guys came out with today. The things that we talked about was really having great energy, style of play. We felt like we could really take advantage of the way we play and the work these guys have put in during the offseason.”
Alabama fell behind early, not scoring until four minutes into the game, a three-pointer by freshman forward Riley Norris, the first points of his college career. Two minutes later, Shannon Hale scored a layup to give the home team a lead it would never relinquish. Alabama was up 39-30 by halftime, with Towson shooting 6-9 from three point range in the first 20 minutes.
“I thought the first half we had opportunities to open it up,” Grant said. “They hurt us a little bit early on the offensive glass but I thought we we able to rally and did a good job to even the rebounding numbers out but I thought the three point line was something we needed to do a better job of taking away from them.”
Alabama came out in the second half and immediately started to pull away, jumping out to an 18 point lead by the 12:00 mark. With the ball moving well, Alabama was able to get many players involved, with all 10 players who saw the court scoring.
“I thought the key to the game was style of play,” Grant said. “I thought defensively we were able to set the tone and crate offense through defense. I thought our guys did a good job of sharing the basketball and finding the open man and taking advantage of the opportunities we had.”
On his competitive debut for the Crimson Tide, Norris made an immediate impact, scoring 10 points and collecting 5 rebounds in 21 minutes of play. The highly-recruited forward will be one of Alabama’s keys going into a difficult out-of-conference schedule.
“Riley came into the game and he did the same thing he does everyday so we weren’t surprised,” Randolph said. “We know what Riley can do. He has a lot of energy, shoots the ball very well, knows his assignments on defense, knows what he’s supposed to do on offense. What we saw today wasn’t a surprise.”
Randolph had a career night, scoring 15 points and picking up 10 rebounds for his first career double-double.
“I was just trying to be aggressive,” Randolph said. “We preach rebounding and it just comes in the flow of the game so we just go out there and do what Coach asks us to do.”
Alabama will host Western Carolina on Monday night at 8 p.m. in Coleman Coliseum.
