The Alabama Crimson Tide continued its unbeaten streak at home this season as it dominated the Georgia Southern Lady Eagles 67-34. Alabama improved to 3-1 on the season with the win.
Alabama made 27 of 64 attempts, giving them 42 percent on the night, slightly better than their season average. Senior Ericka Russell led both teams in scoring with 15 points, while sophomore Jasmine Robinson added another 14. The Tide scored 23 from the bench.
The Tide was also able to take advantage of two scoring runs of seven and 18 points to put the game out of reach even before the first half was over. The Tide entered the half with a 44-18 lead. For Russell, her team’s performance was directly correlative with the intensity with which they played.
“This is the way we’ve been practicing,” Russell said. “Just kind of coming out with energy, playing our game, playing with a lot of team effort and just playing with a lot of intensity. That’s what we’ve been working on.”
For head coach Wendell Hudson, his team’s ability to score was less important than how his team was playing. Hudson said he wasn’t even aware his team had scored 18 unanswered points.
“I knew we were playing awfully well,” Hudson said. “I didn’t know we had an 18-0 run in there. But because we were playing so well, scoring was not just the issue. We were playing well on the defensive end of the court…I did know we were playing well, and I know [their coach] called a couple timeouts when we were playing well. So we felt real good about that.”
Alabama was able to continue its dominance in the second half, as the Tide didn’t allow the Eagles to score until six minutes into the second half.
For Robinson, however, there was one big challenge to overcome against the Eagles: fatigue. “I think we overcame tiredness,” Robinson said. “Because we’ve been going so many days, I think we had only one or two days off, and that’s kind of hard on our legs. A lot of people were tired today. We pushed through to play the best defense we can. So that’s what we did.”
Despite the Tide’s performance, Hudson said his team still turned the ball over too many times and had too many fouls. “We had 14 turnovers, and couple of turnovers, about four or five of those, we were trying to make that extra pass,” Hudson said. “The shame of it is that we were so open sometimes that it was like ‘Oh, I’m so open, I don’t know what to do.’ And I thought defensively if we hadn’t fouled so much, put them on the line, it would have been a really good night.” Russell said she came away from the game knowing the team plays best when they’re playing together, especially on the defensive side of the ball. “That’s the way we play,” Russell said. “We’re a defensive pressure team and how we feel like we’re successful is [because we’re] getting steals, getting turnovers, making easy baskets, making wide open jump shots. So I think that’ll make us be successful throughout the year.”
The Tide will take a two-day hiatus before returning to action Thursday in the Paradise Jam Tournament against Old Dominion.
