3 Takeaways From Alabama Basketball's Loss to Auburn

AUBURN, Ala. — No. 16 Alabama basketball got handed a good ol' fashioned whopping on Wednesday night, with No. 12 Auburn beating up on its rival 99-81.

The game evened the season series, marking the first time the Crimson Tide and the Tigers have split the season series since the 2019-20 season. 

Obviously, it was a lackluster performance, but here are a few of my key takeaways from the loss:

1. Auburn owned the paint.

I wrote about this to a larger extent last night, but it was too important not to reiterate here. Auburn absolutely dominated Alabama's interior defense all night long.

Alabama started its 4-guard lineup, something it's been doing for the past few games, and it allowed the Tigers to get off to a quick start. 

With 6-foot-6 Rylan Griffen essentially playing the '4', he was tasked with guarding Auburn big man Jaylin Williams to start the game. Williams got off to a hot start, and never looked back. 

Auburn continually hunted size mismatches, and even when Oats went with bigger lineups, Williams and his big man counterpart Johni Broome were able to work one-on-one in the post and get a bucket. 

Williams and Broome combined for 50 points in the game, 26 from Williams, a career high, and 24 from Broome, who went for 25 himself the last time these two teams met.

Auburn won the rebounding battle 42-35, won the second chance points battle 24-12, won the points in the paint battle 40-26, and got to the free throw line 15 more times since Alabama's only answer was to hack away in the paint. 

It's well known that interior defense is probably the weakest aspect of this Alabama team, and running into a dominant big duo like Williams and Broome, especially on the road, is a prime recipe for disaster. 

At this point, weak interior defense might just be what Alabama is. I'm not sure how much improvement can really be made in that area over the next eight games of the regular season, especially with the personnel at their disposal. 

The good news? Not many teams have multiple dominant bigs like Auburn, and even then, Alabama already found a way to beat Auburn once. The Crimson Tide is just going to have to be flawless in other areas of the game if it runs into another set of bigs like that again. 

2. Turnovers continually killed momentum.

Another one of Alabama's weak points has been turnovers. Coming into the game, the Crimson Tide ranked 13 out of 14 SEC teams in turnovers per game during conference play.

On the other side, Auburn is one of the best teams in the country at turning its opponents over, especially at home. Yet another recipe for disaster.

Alabama turned the ball over 15 times in the game, compared to just five for Auburn. Nine of those turnovers came in the first half, when Auburn built its lead going into halftime. 

In fact, a plethora of back-to-back turnovers are exactly what let the game get out of hand going into halftime. With 3:44 left in the game, Alabama had showed an incredible amount of mental toughness to battle back after being down double digits early, and had the game tied at 39.

Over the next 3:44 leading into halftime, Alabama turned the ball over four times while Auburn went on a 16-2 run, taking a 14-point lead that was capitalized by a windmill dunk from Williams that sent Neville Arena into a frenzy.

At that point, the game might as well have already been over.

Alabama even made somewhat of an attempt to come back in the second half. After trailing by nearly 20, a three from Grant Nelson cut the lead to 12. What followed was of course, more turnovers, allowing Auburn to extend the lead back out and put the game out of reach. 

When you're already turnover prone, and can't take care of the ball in a road environment like the Jungle, there's not much hope of winning the game.

3. The team's outlook remains unchanged.

Yes, Alabama lost, and badly, but we didn't exactly learn anything new about this team. Rather, concerns that already existed were heavily reinforced.

Alabama turns the ball over too much ad it struggled to guard dominant bigs. We already knew both of those things. 

Alabama lost a game on the road to a soon-to-be top-10 team, a game they were underdogs in. That's to be expected. 

It may not feel like it coming off an 18-point loss, but everything is still in front of the Crimson Tide. As the SEC standings currently sit, Alabama, Tennessee, Auburn and South Carolina all have two losses, essentially a 4-way tie for first place.

Alabama split the series with Auburn, won its only meeting with South Carolina, and still gets a rematch with Tennessee inside Coleman Coliseum before the season ends. 

The back half of the schedule is tougher than the front, but Alabama is still right in the mix for another regular season title. It just has to get back on track Saturday, as it goes on the road to go for the season sweep of LSU.

So yes, a blowout loss to Auburn certainly stings. But in the grand scheme of the season, not much has changed for this team, and that's a good thing.

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