🏀 GAME THREAD 🏀 2025-26 Season Archived Game Threads.

I got curious. There's no ML on the game tonight. Bama is -32.5.

I noticed a parlay on ESPNBet that has the total tonight at Over 168.5 with a few other legs.

What's a little crazy is you can find some BIG money lines tonight. You might look at Vandy playing Lipscomb and see -20,000. Okay, right? But then you look at Bethune-Cookman...who is playing Auburn with that ML at -100,000. Geez.

 

[64Tide]

This time of the year I tend to look at these games in the same vein as NFL pre-season. That's not the right way to see W's and L's. But, it is when you are looking at the team.

Not to disappoint anyone, I'm going to return to myself for a second here.

Points per possession. Here it isn't who that number reads in its entirety. It is the number of possessions.

Clock management. We saw Purdue walking it up and draining time...and possessions.

It's left me wondering why we didn't see more on ball pressure on the in bounds. Ya know? Hurry them up.

As a team, you only have so much energy to expend. Our style of play favors the offensive end. Wasted energy on inbound pressure would have negated our offensive efficiency.

 

[TerryP]

As a team, you only have so much energy to expend. Our style of play favors the offensive end. Wasted energy on inbound pressure would have negated our offensive efficiency.

I saw it reported it was the second fewest possessions of any Bama team in his era. I should have posted the link here.

The point was more geared towards speeding up the pace. It's the one thing I didn't see mentioned in the thread.

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

 

[#80]

Analytics give Illini a 58% chance of winning and Vegas has them as a 3' favorite.

 

[50+yeartidefan]

Great. Cant wait. Better than Chicago shows
That ms50+ watches.

 

[Bammerboy321]

 

[alabama mike]

As I said last week, we know we are going to put up a lot of shots. We must defend and rebound the ball. Illinois will be physical and we struggle in that department IMO.

 

[Bammerboy321]

Rebounding again is going to be a big question mark. Question is whether or not our guards can step up and crash the glass. I don't have any faith in Sherrell and Williamson being able to limit Illinois in the paint. Philon vs Boswell is going to be a good matchup. Need Wrightsell and Mallette to have better games than they did vs Purdue. Hopefully Bristow can play. We need an extra forward to bring a junkyard dog mentality. I think Hannah provides some of that off the bench, but we need a Juwan Gary or Dioubatte guy at 4 to really provide a spark.

Honestly Oats has been pretty damn good at getting his teams to rise to the challenge in these neutral/road site games in enemy territory. It'll be interesting to see how this team performs this game. We got hammered at home on the glass vs Purdue and still had a shot to win it. Illinois is no slouch though, as they already beat Texas Tech already.

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

 

[#80]

View attachment 33030

He needs to step up!

 

[BamaFan334]

@Bammerboy321 went big on us tonight. Hope he hit our shots.

 

[Bammerboy321]

 

[Bammerboy321]

Game time! Hoping we see a lot of Amari Allen and Davion Hannah. Oats stayed after the Purdue game that he wished he played Hannah more.

 

[Bammerboy321]

Too much dribbling by Wrightsell there

 

[Bammerboy321]

I would love to know if there is a softer 5 in CBB than Aden Sherrell

 

[Bammerboy321]

Big 3 by Amari Allen!

 

[Secondand26]

Right-SELL?

 

[Bammerboy321]

Ridiculously bad defense by Alabama right now. Horrible transition D and no one is even challenging shots.

 

[Bammerboy321]

It sucks when we get offensive boards and can't capitalize because you know Alabama's defense isn't going to get stops. Oats has got to fucking figure this out. Just saying we need to play harder and get tougher isn't good enough.

 

[Bammerboy321]

We're not making shots right now (even in transition 2 on 1) and not playing good D.