No. 20 Alabama Forces 23 Turnovers, Runs Past Sam Houston 96-74 in Season Opener

Nate Oats walked out of Coleman Coliseum on Tuesday night with a 22-point win, 96 points on the board and a complaint list that started with the Tide's own offense. That tells you everything about where the bar sits in Tuscaloosa. No. 20 Alabama opened the season by grinding Sam Houston into dust with defense, cashing 23 Bearkat turnovers into 33 points and running for 41 fast-break points, the most of the Oats era, in a 96-74 win that never really felt in doubt.

"We have never played this poorly on offense and still were able to put up 96 points," Oats said afterward, per Alabama Athletics. It is a very Alabama sentence. The Tide shot 10-of-31 from three, missed its first six attempts from deep, and still led for 38 minutes and 54 seconds. When your defense is generating layups by the dozen, the jumper becomes optional.

The Tide Defense Shows Up Early

The first few minutes were clunky on the offensive end. Alabama bricked its first six threes, and the early points came from the paint, with Drew Fielder, Jamarion Davis-Fleming and Qayden Samuels doing the work inside. The defense, though, was locked in from the opening tip. Alabama forced four turnovers before the first media timeout, and that pattern never really stopped.

London Jemison finally broke the three-point seal to make it 11-7, and moments later Jaxon Richardson got loose for a breakaway windmill dunk for his first collegiate points. It was the kind of play that wakes a building up in November, and the student section, which Oats singled out for praise afterward, obliged.

Alabama then put together a 10-1 run, with Tarris Bouie scoring the final five points of it, to go up 30-16 with 5:48 left in the half. Sam Houston deserves some credit for not folding there. The Bearkats answered with an 11-4 burst, and Jacobe Coleman's three with 1:05 left sent them to the locker room trailing just 40-29. At that point, Sam Houston had shot about 30 percent from the field and was very much still in the game, which said more about Alabama's offensive sloppiness than anything the Bearkats were doing.

The 16-2 Avalanche

Whatever Oats said at halftime worked. Alabama opened the second half on a 16-2 run that turned an 11-point game into a 22-point rout. Sam Houston went 1-for-8 from the field during that stretch and turned it over four times, and the Tide punished every mistake in transition.

Zion Pipkin's three with 15:25 to play made it 56-34, and that was as close as Sam Houston got the rest of the night. Fielder's layup with 12:40 left gave Alabama its first 30-point lead, and the margin eventually peaked at 32 at 79-47. The final 22-point margin is a little generous to the Bearkats, who got hot from deep once the game was decided.

That was the turning point, and it was not complicated. Alabama's pressure took a competitive game and broke it open inside of five minutes. The Tide finished with 17 steals, the most by an Alabama team since 2020, and the 23 forced turnovers were the most by an Alabama defense since 2012. Six different players had at least two steals.

Depth Is the Story

The most striking number in the box score might be the bench production. Alabama's reserves outscored Sam Houston's bench 57-24, and the Tide's two leading scorers both came off the pine.

Jemison was the most efficient player on the floor, scoring 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting, including 3-of-4 from three, in just 20 minutes. Fielder matched that total with 15 points on 5-of-9 shooting, 2-of-4 from deep and a perfect 3-of-3 at the line, adding six rebounds to his stat line. Amari Allen, named to the Naismith Trophy watch list along with teammate Aden Holloway, added 12 points, four assists and two steals, though it took 11 shots to get there.

Brandon Garrison was the quiet engine of the defense. Garrison finished with nine points, four rebounds, three steals and two blocks, and Alabama credited Garrison's pressure on Sam Houston's bigs as a major reason the turnovers piled up. Oats specifically pointed to Garrison's athleticism, defensive intensity and effort as setting the tone.

Among the starters, newcomer Bouie led the way with 13 points on 5-of-8 shooting and a team-high seven rebounds. Samuels, another newcomer who got the start, contributed nine points, five assists and four steals. Keitenn Bristow blocked four shots in 22 minutes as Alabama finished with 10 blocks, and Davis-Fleming was a perfect 3-of-3 from the field for eight points.

"Our young guys played great," Oats said, and the box score backs it up.

There was one notable absence. Holloway, a standout guard, sat out while serving the next-to-last game of a five-game suspension, according to Field Level Media. Alabama's three exhibitions counted toward that penalty, so Holloway is due back soon, and a team that just scored 96 without Holloway is about to get one of its best shot-makers back.

The Numbers That Should Worry Oats

This is not a flawless performance, and Oats knows it. Sam Houston outrebounded Alabama 45-42 and grabbed 15 offensive boards, a problem Oats acknowledged directly afterward, saying the team has been emphasizing rebounding in practice and still is not doing it well. For a team with real size, losing the glass to a Conference USA program is a red flag worth watching.

The perimeter shooting was also rough. Cole Cloer went 1-of-9 from the field and 0-of-6 from three. Alabama shot just 32.3 percent from deep as a team, while Sam Houston knocked down 15 of its 33 attempts (45.5 percent), many of them after the outcome was settled.

What Alabama did elsewhere covered those cracks. The Tide outscored Sam Houston 48-18 in the paint, shot 48 percent overall and committed only 10 turnovers of its own. Oats is now 7-1 in season openers at Alabama, and the Tide have scored at least 90 points in each of their last four openers.

Bearkats Show Some Fight

For Sam Houston, picked fourth in the Conference USA preseason poll, there were flashes. Coleman led the Bearkats with 16 points and six rebounds while hitting 4-of-10 from three. Justin Begg scored all 13 of his points in the second half, going 3-of-5 from deep with four assists. Pipkin was a frustrating mix of good and bad: 11 points on 4-of-6 shooting, six assists and four steals, but also eight turnovers. Aidan McDowell added 10 points, and Enel St. Bernard grabbed eight rebounds with three steals and two blocks. Freshman Mahliq Guiseppi-Kitson chipped in six points. As a team, the Bearkats shot 45 percent after halftime, a big jump from their first-half struggles, and they matched Alabama with 17 assists. There is a functional offense here once the ball security catches up.

The Bearkats' 23 turnovers were the whole ballgame. Take away even half of those, and Sam Houston's hot shooting from deep makes this a much more uncomfortable night for the Tide.

The Take

Alabama looks like a team whose floor is very high even when the offense is off. The defense is real, the depth is ridiculous, and a Holloway return is coming. The rebounding needs work before SEC play, but that is the kind of problem coaches like to have in November.

Alabama is 1-0 and next up is Arkansas State at Coleman Coliseum on Friday, Nov. 6. Sam Houston is 0-1 and next up is its home opener against Howard Payne on Saturday, Nov. 7. The full box score (opens in a new tab) is at ESPN, with recaps from Alabama Athletics (opens in a new tab) and Sam Houston Athletics (opens in a new tab).

Sources: Alabama Athletics, Sam Houston Athletics, ESPN, Field Level Media, Tuscaloosa Thread, Yahoo Sports. More men's college basketball coverage on Undrafted.

Sam Houston gave Alabama a real test for a half. Then the Tide's defense remembered what it was built to do.

Photo: Alabama Athletics.