🏀 Alabama Played 3-on-5 for 10 Minutes and Nearly Came Back

[18Champs]

In one of the crazier sequences in college basketball, Alabama nearly came back from an 11-point deficit with just over 10 minutes to play. What's so fascinating about that? Alabama was playing THREE-on-five against No. 14 Minnesota.

During the Barclays Center Classic game, Alabama’s Collin Sexton and Minnesota’s Nate Mason started jawing at each other, resulting in a double technical. Mason was subsequently tossed, much to the dismay of head coach Richard Pitino, who received a technical foul as well.

A second brawl occurred shortly after involving Minnesota's Amir Coffey and Dupree McBrayer and Alabama's Riley Norris and John Petty, leading to the ejection of the entire Alabama bench. Check out some of the scenes below.





What happened next, though, was unparalleled.

With 12 minutes left, Alabama was forced to play with just five players against Minnesota. But just one minute later, point guard Dazon Ingram fouled out, ensuing in a four-on-five matchup for the remainder of the game. But the insanity didn't stop there. Shooting Guard John Petty landed awkwardly on a three-point shot, leaving head coach Avery Johnson with just THREE eligible players against Minnesota.



Despite being absurdly short-handed, the Crimson Tide outscored the Gophers 30-22 with a two-man disadvantage to cut the lead to just three points with just over a minute to go. But Alabama couldn't complete the historic comeback and came up just short, suffering an 89-84 loss. Sexton finished with 40 points to lead the charge in a game that will surely be a hot topic when the AP comes out with its latest college basketball rankings.



Talk about a crazy game.

Alabama played 3-on-5 for 10 minutes and nearly came back

 

[alagator]

 

[BamaFan334]

This will be something Alabama and college sports fans will never forget. This team is now a team that will last in Alabama history. If this doesn't make you believe, I don't know what will. These guys will be in the dance and give any team in the country a run. Not being a homer, just see a team that fights till the end which is very dangerous in college sports. Add talent to that and you have a recipe for a team that can run.

 

[TerryP]

Dan Lebatard was talking about Alabama basketball today on the radio show. Think about that.

 

[Entity]

Dan Lebatard was talking about Alabama basketball today on the radio show. Think about that.

They stopped sportscenter on saturday night after rivalry weekend to talk Alabama Basketball.

 

[JoshB]

Watched it last night, insane that they were able to pull that off. Think the brawl fired them up like crazy. Sexton is going to be insane.

 

[alagator]

Three-Man Alabama Pulls Off Greatest Loss in NCAA Basketball History

It’s hardly noteworthy if, in November, the country's 14th-ranked men’s college basketball team beats the 25th-ranked team. And that’s exactly what happened Saturday in Brooklyn: the Minnesota Golden Gophers took down Alabama, 89-84. How the teams got to that result was so remarkable, however, that the contest will be hailed as the game of the season, even after March produces its standard catalog of upsets and buzzer-beaters. That’s because Alabama was forced to play three-against-five for more than 10 minutes in the second half—and the Crimson Tide nearly overcame a double-digit deficit and won the damn game doing so.



To understand how this happened, it’s first necessary to find out why this happened. Why did a basketball team find itself playing with only three players for more than 10 minutes in an official, real-life game? Was there a scurvy outbreak? Spontaneous combustion?

The bizarre scenario began with 13:39 left to play in the second half, when two players scuffled underneath the basket near the Alabama bench. The Crimson Tide reserves, riled up by the brief shoving match, scampered a few feet onto the court. It wasn’t much, but sitting players are forbidden from encroaching the court, and the referees ejected Alabama’s entire bench. Alabama was already losing 57-50 at this point, and if the Tide wanted to pull off the comeback, they’d have to do so without making a single substitution.

That's when things started to get really strange. Alabama sophomore Dazon Ingram fouled out with 11:37 left on the clock. A minute after that, freshman John Petty rolled his ankle and had to be helped off the court. Trailing 65-54 with 10:41 still to play, Alabama found itself down to just three able-bodied, eligible players: Collin Sexton, Galin Smith, and Riley Norris.

It was at this point that the commentators on the game's live stream—befitting the strangeness of this contest, it was available only on Facebook—wondered aloud whether Alabama should forfeit. Things were so dire, the production crew rolled out a chyron excerpting Rule 3, Sec. 1, Article 3 of the NCAA rulebook: “When there is only one player participating for a team, that team shall forfeit unless the referee believes that both teams have an opportunity to win.”

Any sane referee would've thought Alabama had no opportunity to win. But they somehow managed to narrow Minnesota's lead to three points in the waning moments. It's hard to pick out my favorite part of the Alabama comeback. Maybe it was seeing the Minnesota players, who so gleefully hollered with each Alabama ejection, look befuddled and shell-shocked as they failed to unlock the Crimson Tide’s 1-2 zone.

Or maybe it was one of Sexton's many baskets. The Alabama freshman scored 40 points and immediately became the coolest player in all of college basketball. Successories should sell motivational posters featuring Collin Sexton. Instead of an image of a lion or summeting mountaineer, it'd be a picture of Sexton shooting over three defenders along with the text "MAKE IT HAPPEN" or "PERSEVERANCE." I’d hang one over my desk.




I will implore you to watch the game for yourself, because it is awesome. If you want to skip ahead to Sexton, Smith, and Norris’ Spartan-like battle against Minnesota’s full squad, it begins around the 1 hour and 49 minute mark of the video below.



This wasn't the first time an undermanned college basketball team succeeded against all odds. Chuck Klosterman wrote at length about a 1988 North Dakota junior college tournament where a team had to play three-against-five for extended minutes. That team, United Tribes Technical College, actually managed to beat their full-strength opponent, but it wasn't televised.

Sexton and his two wingmen may have come up short, but, at the final whistle, they carried themselves like victors while Minnesota’s squad looked relieved to escape with the win. College basketball trades in a currency of upsets, and the fact that we'll be talking about this non-upset for years underscores just how great Alabama's three-man wrecking crew was. Thank goodness we have the tape.