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Collin Sexton's final action as a college basketball player was getting hit with a technical foul for taunting a superior opponent while trailing by 26 points.
Not exactly the last impression someone wants to make before turning pro, and probably not the type of image the University of Alabama wants to project to the rest of the country after making it back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2012.
Classless.
Clueless.
Unacceptable.
So, Alabama's one-and-done point guard took a seat on the bench and watched the final few minutes of his brief college career from the sidelines. Credit to Alabama coach Avery Johnson for at least getting that right on Saturday in Pittsburgh. From the bench, Sexton got a good look at what it must feel like to watch Alabama pummel, say, Coastal Carolina inside Bryant-Denny Stadium on a Saturday in the fall.
Only worse.
At least Nick Saban is nice enough not to run up the score on the sacrificial lambs of college football. Villanova isn't wiring $1.5 million into Alabama's bank account on Monday morning, either.
Back on the big stage of college basketball for the first time since 2012, Alabama started its second-round NCAA Tournament game against the best team in college basketball by missing the pregame national anthem. According to a team spokesman, the team was in the locker room changing into their uniforms, and didn't make it out to the court on time.
Huh?
There was nowhere to go but up from there, but things didn't get much better.
Alabama's defense was solid in the first half, but Villanova piled it on after the break and won 81-58. The Wildcats of Philadelphia, playing about five hours from home, made 17 3-pointers in a 40-minute game of basketball.
Fun team, that Villanova.
Guard Donte DiVincenzo, who is nicknamed the "Big Ragu" because "I'm Italian and have red hair," made five 3-pointers in the first half. Teammate Mikal Bridges then had 17 points in the first five minutes of the second half.
"Some nights we're going to have them," Villanova coach Jay Wright said of the 3-pointers, "and sometimes we're going to have to sleep in the streets."
Villanova will probably be partying in the streets in two weeks the way the Wildcats play team basketball. Wright has won at least 32 games in each of his last four seasons, which is a Division I record.
It certainly didn't help Alabama that 16-seed University of Maryland, Baltimore County defeated one-seed Virginia on Friday night before a noon game on Saturday against another top-seeded team. Villanova shot the ball like the Golden State Warriors, and Alabama was 4 of 16 from distance.
It wasn't completely useless, though, this St. Patrick's Day sobering of Alabama's young basketball team in the NCAA Tournament's Round of 32. There was a lot to be learned, and much to be remembered for next season.
One, Alabama should be better this time next year.
Yes, Sexton will be gone, but that doesn't seem like such a bad thing after watching him against a truly special team. Alabama wants to win a national championship in basketball. That doesn't happen with a 6-foot-2 point guard who wants to play isolation basketball when things get tough.
Sexton wouldn't say definitively that he was going pro after Alabama's loss, but his body language screamed it at the end of regulation.
Barring transfers, everyone else could return for Alabama, which likely would make it a Top 25 team to begin the season. Johnson has built a solid foundation in Tuscaloosa, and now it's time to take the next step.
"We're not there yet," Johnson said.
Sexton made a name for himself in the SEC Tournament, where he helped Alabama receive an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, but Alabama should have won more than one NCAA Tournament game with him at point guard. Instead of peaking at the end of the regular season, though, Alabama lost five games in a row.
If Alabama had won a few of those games, then it likely would have received a more favorable seed in the NCAA Tournament and avoided a team like Villanova until the second weekend.
"By the time we got to the SEC Tournament, they were ready to trust our staff 100 percent," Johnson said.
That's not good enough, and that can't happen next season with the amount of talent Alabama is returning.
And it won't.
Johnson is a good coach, who knows what he's doing at Alabama despite all of the disorganization on Saturday. Herb Jones has the potential to be a special player if he works on his game, and John Petty should be more consistent next season with a year of experience to draw upon.
"That's a young team that's going to be really good," said Wright, Villanova's coach. "I would not like to see them in next year's Tournament. Avery did a great job getting a bunch of young guys here."
