It wasn’t a dominant performance. It certainly wasn’t pretty. But the Alabama Crimson Tide will take it.
Alabama found a way to beat the Ole Miss Rebels Saturday night in Coleman Coliseum in a game that, if lost, would have been a big stain on the Tide’s NCAA tournament resume.
After dropping four straight conference games, Alabama will take the wins any way it can get them. The Tide took down Ole Miss 69-67 in the second overtime of an ugly game that Alabama had to fight back to win.
“I can’t express enough how proud I am of our guys for the effort they showed tonight, the fight they had and the will to win,” head coach Anthony Grant said.
“That was all about heart and passion tonight. We had a lot of guys tonight that really put it all out there on the line tonight. We’re just happy and very fortunate to come out with the win.”
And fortunate they were.
It took everything Alabama had to chip away at the early Ole Miss lead in a game in which the Tide looked lost on offense for most of the first half. Alabama shot 37.9 percent from the field in the first half and hit just one of eight 3-point attempts. It also committed 10 fouls to Ole Miss’s three.
“At the half, the thing that stood out, they were shooting 56 percent from the field,” Grant said. “Just watching the game, I thought we had a level of frustration because we weren’t making shots, we were settling for shots.”
But in the second half, Alabama battled back and was able to force overtime after being down by as many as 10 points late in the first half.
The formula? “Staying the course,” as junior Andrew Steele called it. Staying levelheaded and focusing on playing tough defense.
“Just staying the course. That’s the thing coach tells us to do. Stay the course all the time,” Steele said. “I think the thing was, we stepped up defensively. Offensively, we struggled at times, but especially the second half, our defensive intensity stepped up and created a lot of offensive opportunities.”
Steele would play a critical role in the Alabama players from the bench. The Tide played 11 players over the course of the game, while the Rebels played just seven. Names like Charles Hankerson, Moussa Gueye and Rodney Cooper showed up on the score sheet at crucial moments.
“When you look at the effort we got tonight from a variety of guys,” Grant said, “We need that. We need that as a team.”
Alabama will head to Auburn on Tuesday for another can’t-lose game if the Tide wants to keep its tournament hopes alive. Then, it’ll be off to Baton Rouge for a game against the LSU Tigers, who would love nothing more than to get revenge for their game in Tuscaloosa earlier in the year.
Alabama’s goal? At this point in the season, the late Al Davis said it best: Just win, baby.
