No. 4 Alabama basketball returns to action at Vanderbilt
Alabama’s No. 4 basketball team will take its six-game winning streak to Vanderbilt for a Tuesday night game in Nashville.
The Crimson Tide (15-2, 5-0 SEC) is coming off a 40-point win over LSU while the Commodores are coming off its biggest win of the season. A 97-84 win over No. 15 Arkansas on Saturday lifted Vanderbilt to 9-8 overall and 2-2 in conference play.
The 7:30 p.m. CT game comes less than three days after now-former Alabama basketball player Darius Miles was charged with capital murder in an early-Sunday shooting in Tuscaloosa.
Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats said the team met Sunday evening to discuss the matter before gathering again the following morning.
“We’re continuing to support each other as we process this and balance school and basketball,” Oats said Monday afternoon. “To that end, we regrouped (Monday) morning to maintain our routine and some structure in the midst of this situation. We will practice before heading up to Nashville for the Vanderbilt game.”
The Commodores enter the game ranked 91st in the NET rankings that also ranks Alabama No. 3. It was Vanderbilt who knocked Alabama out of last year’s SEC tournament, 82-76 in Tampa. Scotty Pippen Jr., has since moved on to the pros to leave a roster with four averaging in double figures. Liam Robbins leads the way scoring 13.2 points.
Vanderbilt has a shot at winning consecutive games against ranked opponents for the first time since 2007 against an Alabama team that’s playing its best basketball in years. After allowing 100 points in a loss to Gonzaga, none of the following six Tide opponents scored more than 69 points.
Alabama enters with the nation’s No. 8 defense as ranked by efficiency on KenPom.com.
Brandon Miller was again named the SEC freshman of the week after scoring 31 points and nailing 7 of 11 from 3-point range in the 106-66 win over LSU on Saturday. He’s leading the team with a 19.5-point average entering a Vanderbilt game to be played just 25 miles from where he grew up in Antioch, Tennessee.
Mark Sears is the other with a double-figure scoring average after transferring from Ohio in the offseason. The guard is netting 15.2 points a night with four others adding between 9.6 and 7.1 points a night.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.