Alabama basketball falls short to Oregon in the Players Era Championship

Alabama Basketball fell short against the Oregon Ducks, losing 83-81 in the championship round of the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas.

Alabama trailed 81-75 with 30 seconds to play, but mounted a furious comeback to tie the game. Aden Holloway drained a three-pointer to cut Oregon’s lead to three, and then Alabama got a steal in the backcourt and Mark Sears was fouled at the free throw line.

Sears hit the first and then missed the second, but Mo Dioubate flew in for an offensive rebound and was fouled himself trying to throw it into an open Holloway. Dioubate hit both free throws and tied the game at 81.

Oregon’s Keeshawn Barthelemy beat Dioubate off the dribble and reached the rim. Derrion Reid came over to challenge and forced a miss, but that left the offensive glass wide open for a put-back dunk by Nate Bittle that gave the Ducks a two-point lead with 4.5 seconds left.

After a timeout, Sears ran the ball the length of the floor and threw it to an open Nelson for a layup that went, but the clock went to zero before Nelson could fire the shot. Sears didn’t have enough time to get to the rim, pass and attempt a shot.

Before the final sequence, Oregon benefited from a questionable (to put it mildly) goaltending call by Jarin Stevenson, which put the Ducks ahead by two with just under two minutes to play. It was called “goalie on the field” and the referees couldn’t see enough to knock it over during the replay review. It certainly looked clean from my couch…

With the loss, Alabama moves to 6-2 on the season and leaves Las Vegas with a frustrating loss.

3. Fluctuation was once again a big problem

Alabama was once again sloppy in basketball and it was costly against a fundamentally solid Oregon team. Alabama turned the game over 15 times, including 10 in the first half, preventing the Crimson Tide from gaining a lead. Instead, the game was tied at halftime, despite Oregon’s struggles behind the three-point line.

Too many ball losses are self-inflicted wounds. On several occasions, an Alabama player dribbled the ball off his own foot. Turnovers will happen when you play at the pace Alabama plays, but unforced errors are deadly when you play against good teams.

2. Alabama is not an elite team with this version of Mark Sears

Will the real Mark Sears please stand up? Because the version of Sears we saw most of this season was a shell of the man who turned Alabama around and carried it to the Final Four a year ago.

Sears scored 24 points in victories over Houston and Rutgers in each game of the first two rounds of this tournament, but was just 11 of 32 from the field. Against Oregon, Sears finished the game with 11 points and was 3 of 14 from the field, including 1 of 11 from three.

This season, Sears is now 15 of 52 (29%) from three. He shot just under 44% from three last season.

Even when Sears plays as poorly as he does, Alabama is a good basketball team. But they are far from great and far from the elite, national championship team they should be. They need Sears to be the Sears they were last season and the guy who was the preseason National Player of the Year to reach the heights this team hopes to achieve.

1. All eyes are on Latrell Wrightsell’s injury

Early in the second half, Alabama senior guard Latrell Wrightsell suffered a lower extremity injury. He was unable to put any weight on his injured leg and had to be taken off the field.

Wrightsell went straight back to the locker room and was later seen back on the Alabama bench with a boot on his foot. The broadcast said he had a lower leg injury and it was doubtful he would be able to return.

After the game, Nate Oats said what many feared when the injury happened:

A torn Achilles tendon would obviously be a season-ending injury for Wrightsell and a major loss for Alabama basketball. The Tide is close to getting USF transfer Chris Youngblood back from a preseason injury to get to full strength, but Wrightsell’s injury likely means we’ll never see this team’s full potential.

More than anything to do with this team or this season, you just feel terribly sorry for Wrightsell in his final season of college basketball. He battled concussions at the end of last season and was playing at a high level for Alabama early this season.

He deserves better than for it to end like this.

Alabama now travels to Chapel Hill to face North Carolina in the SEC/ACC Challenge on Wednesday.