COLUMBIA, Mo. – The No. 15/20 Alabama men's basketball team was upset at Missouri Saturday afternoon, 92-86. It marked the first loss in SEC play for the Crimson
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COLUMBIA, Mo. – The No. 15/20 Alabama men's basketball team was upset at Missouri Saturday afternoon, 92-86. It marked the first loss in SEC play for the Crimson Tide, who fell to 11-4 overall and 2-1 in league play with the setback.
The turning point of the game was Missouri's 22-5 run early in the second half that took a one-point deficit (50-49) and turned it into an insurmountable 72-54 lead for the Tigers. The Crimson Tide fought to get back into the game, cutting the lead to as little as four in the final minutes, but it proved to be too much to overcome.
Guards
Jahvon Quinerly and
Jaden Shackelford led Alabama with 19 and 17 points, respectively. Guard
JD Davison went for 13 points and team highs of seven rebounds and four assists, while guard
Keon Ellis ended the night with 12 points.
The Tigers were led behind a career-high 30 points from Kobe Brown to go along with 13 boards and four assists for the Tigers (7-7, 1-1 SEC).
Head Coach Nate Oats Postgame Comments
"We've got to give Missouri a lot of credit coming off a CoVID pause and being down a couple of guys. They played a lot harder than we played. That may have been our worst performance of the year. I told our guys going into the game this was going to be a leadership test, maturity test to see where we are at coming off two big wins against Tennessee and Florida. Last time we had two big wins was Gonzaga and Houston, and we did not play well on the road at Memphis. Same thing happened here, two big wins and we did not play well on the road. We've got to get some leadership. It starts here with me. I've got to figure out how to get these guys motivated and play a little harder because the effort was drastically different between the two teams tonight and it cost us the game. If we are going to try and compete for an SEC Championship, we got to win games on the road when we've got opportunities to win them. Tonight, we probably should've won on the road and had opportunities, but just weren't able to take advantage. It's a disappointing loss and we need to look ourselves in the eye and find a way to play tougher and harder than we did tonight."
Team Stats
- It marked the third consecutive loss for the Crimson Tide in Mizzou Arena
- The loss snapped a 30-game winning streak for the Tide when scoring 80 or more points in a game
- The Tide made 33-of-67 (49.3 percent) from the floor while Missouri hit 31-of-63 (49.2 percent) field goals
- Alabama had a sizable advantage in points in the paint (46-36) and bench points (27-5) in the contest
- The contest featured six lead changes and three ties, with all but one lead change coming in the opening stanza
First Half
- Missouri opened the game on a 9-0 run, before a three-point play on a and-1 dunk by Juwan Gary sparked a 14-2 run for the Tide
- After taking the lead at 14-11, Alabama battled through four lead changes and two ties over the next 5:49 minutes of play meeting at a 24-24 score
- UA outscored the Tigers 19-11 over the next 6:44 minutes of action, slowly building to its largest lead of the half at 43-35
- A 5-0 run by Mizzou concluded the half as the Tide held a 43-40 score heading into the break
- Shackelford and Quinerly scored 10 points apiece to lead Alabama
- UA led in points off turnovers 13-3, turning the ball over just three times compared to six turnovers from the Tigers
- The Tide made 17 of its 32 field goal attempts, while Missouri was 15-of-31 in the half
Second Half
- Missouri again started hot, opening the half on a 10-4 run to take a 50-47 lead
- After a Quinerly layup cut the lead to one, the Tigers scored seven consecutive points to jump start the 22-5 run that gave Mizzou a 72-54 lead with 10:44 to play
- Gary again kicked off the Tide's offense as UA went on a 10-2 run over the next three minutes to trim the lead to 10 at the under eight-minute timeout
- Trailing 82-68 with 5:19 left, the Tide used a 16-6 run to cut the lead to four (88-84) with 18 seconds to go, but failed to get any closer
- Quinerly led the Tide in the half with nine points and four rebounds as Noah Gurley made all nine of his points in the second half
Up Next
- Alabama returns home to host in-state rival No. 9 Auburn on Tuesday, Jan. 11 at 8 p.m. CT. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.