After suffering a loss earlier this week to Kentucky, Alabama was hoping to bounce back at home where the Crimson Tide was a perfect 10-0.  

That impressive home record lost a little bit of luster as Alabama (12-4, 1-2) fell to Vanderbilt 54-48 on Sunday. The Crimson Tide led for a majority of the game, but the team was unable to survive a late surge by the Commodores.

“I thought we didn’t take very good care of the basketball,” said coach Kristy Curry. “We had three turnovers at halftime and 11 in the second half. 

At the half Alabama held a 20-17 lead after both teams combined to shoot 12-53 from the field. The game changed once the second half started.

Three minutes into the third quarter Vanderbilt took its first lead of the game as both team combined to score 14 points.

Alabama countered back with an 8-0 run to take possession of the lead headed into the final quarter, but Alabama was unable to keep up with a suddenly hot-shooting (6-11 behind the arc in the second half) Vanderbilt team that went on to outscore the Crimson Tide 23-13 in the final 10 minutes of play.

“I just think we got away from executing our plays,” Quanetria Bolton said. “We let them speed us up and it kind of got us out of our game.”

Vanderbilt’s coach, Melanie Balcomb, said Alabama’s team improved a lot since she faced them twice last season, but she reminded her players earlier in the week that they had beaten a lot of these players before.

“This is a tough place to play now and it didn’t used to be,” Balcomb said.

Balcomb said she went small late in the game when she realized none of her defenders were having success keeping Alabama from driving at the basket.

“The bottom line was no one could keep their penetration, I mean they just put their head down and go and we couldn’t stop any of them,” Balcomb said.

Breanna Hayden started for the first time this season, and finished with 10 points and eight rebounds. Hayden said the team needs to rely less on its ability to penetrate opposing defenses.

“[We need to improve on] just trying to hit the open shots that we do have because people seem to back up off us because they know we want to drive them,” Hayden said.

Alabama will hit the road later this week to face rival Auburn on Thursday at 6 p.m.