Ricky Tarrant is undefeated as Alabama’s starting point guard.
Tarrant got his first start in a Crimson Tide uniform in Tuesday night’s 82-71 victory over the University of South Florida Bulls. The junior guard who transferred to Alabama from Tulane in the summer of 2013 accrued 17 points, 8 assists and 5 steals on 3-of-9 shooting.
“It’s not about me,” he said. “I’m just glad we won tonight. I thought we did a great job of coming out with energy, and it just all came together. As you can see we’re all having fun together, so it’s great.”
Rodney Cooper led all scorers with 20 points on 7-of-13 shooting including going a perfect 4-of-4 from the free throw line. Cooper started the night’s scoring with a made layup 13 seconds into the game, giving Alabama a lead. The Crimson Tide opened the game on a 6-0 run, weathered a USF run at the game’s finish and never trailed.
Levi Randolph’s streak of made free throws ended at 38 consecutive makes, one short of the school record. Randolph went 1-for-2 from the charity stripe but scored 14 points on 6-of-11 shooting while picking up three steals and six rebounds. Freshman point guard Justin Coleman also scored in double digits, picking up 11 points on 3-of-9 shooting in 19 minutes of play.
“I think the strength of our team is we have great depth and great versatility so on any given night, it’s not about who starts,” Alabama coach Anthony Grant said. “I think we had eight guys in double-figure minutes tonight, almost nine guys. I think that’s the strength of our team. I think Ricky did a great job running this team today. You can see by the numbers on the stat sheet that he did really well, but I think more than that, just the energy that he brought to the team tonight. I thank everybody tonight. It was a great team win.”
Alabama was able to control the defensive glass, limiting the Bulls to only 10 offensive rebounds and five second chance points. Starting center Jimmie Taylor led Alabama with 11 boards
“In practice, we do a lot of drills – we call them Hunger Games,” Cooper said. “We don’t want nobody to get offensive rebounds so it just carried over on to the court today.”
Despite leading by as much as 19, Grant said USF’s tenacity ensured his team could never relax. USF cut the lead every time Alabama started to pull away, eventually falling by 11 points.
“Give South Florida credit; they’re a very gritty basketball team,” he said. “We knew that coming in. They’ve had a lot of games similar to tonight where they had deficits, and they’ve always been able to fight themselves back into position to win. That happened a couple of times tonight, and I thought our guys responded really well in terms of being able to answer their runs with runs of our own. I thought it was a great growth opportunity to be able to build leads against a team like South Florida with their quickness and speed and versatility.”
Alabama’s offense is averaging 80.8 points per game, well above last season’s total of 68. Grant stressed this team’s individual identity, which Tarrant says is team-oriented and exuberant.
“It starts in practice,” he said. “We get after each other but we know at the end of the day, we’re one team. So when we get a chance to play against other people we try to punish them and just have fun out there and I think tonight it paid off.”
Alabama will travel to Cincinnati to take on Xavier Saturday at 7 p.m.
