Turnovers were, once again, aplenty for Alabama, but its strong perimeter defense led to an 81-73 win over Furman on Tuesday night.

“Big win. Huge. We needed that one,” coach Nate Oats said. “… I thought our defensive effort was high-level for 38 minutes, outside of the first two minutes of the second half.”

With turnovers being an issue all season, Oats emphasized limiting turnovers during practice leading up to Tuesday’s game, including making the losing team run sprints if they let the opposing team score off of a turnover.

Turnovers still plagued Alabama against the Paladins, as the Crimson Tide turned the ball over 11 times in the first eight minutes of the game and 22 times over the course of the game. Alabama is averaging 20.5 turnovers in its first four games of the season, which ranks 344th in the country.

But as Oats had simulated in practice, Alabama allowed just 14 points off of their turnovers after allowing Rhode Island to score 33 points off of 22 turnovers on Friday night.

“I thought our mindset tonight was 100% better,” Oats said. “We just sprinted back and got the stop after the turnover instead of hanging our hat. We are going to turn the ball over. Hopefully it’s more like 10 or 12 instead of 22, but when we do, we just got to get back and get stops.”

The Crimson Tide defense was able to make up for the turnovers on the offensive end, limiting the Paladins to just 14 points off of the 22 Alabama turnovers. Overall, Alabama held the Paladins to shooting just 31% from the field and 27% from three. Junior guard John Petty Jr. held Furman’s leading scorer, forward Clay Mounce, to zero points in the second half after Mounce scored 10 in the first half.

“That’s all [Petty] wanted to talk about after the game,” Oats said. “When he is thinking about defense, his shot is going to drop.”

In an eight-minute portion of the first half, freshman guard Jaden Shackelford became the main source of offense for the Crimson Tide. He scored 14 of the 15 Alabama points and shot 3 of 3 from beyond the arc during that stretch.

“Getting in our flow and finding the open spots to get my shots up felt good,” Shackelford said.

Shackelford led the Crimson Tide with 25 points, shooting 7 of 12 from the field, and also brought in five rebounds.

Sophomore guard Kira Lewis Jr. had just two points in the first half, but scored 17 second-half points, including making all six of his free throws. Petty found his rhythm after averaging only 7.7 points and shooting 20% from beyond the arc the first three games of the season. He shot 3 of 6 from three, scoring 16 points overall.

Alabama will travel to the Bahamas next week to play in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament. It plays North Carolina in the first round next Wednesday at 1:30 p.m.