Arkansas travels to Alabama on Saturday for a pivotal SEC matchup at Coleman Coliseum.
Arkansas (19-9, 8-7) recently earned four straight wins before that streak was thwarted at home by a hot Kentucky team. That five-game stretch for the Razorbacks featured four home games, and the Hogs have been considerably better in the friendly confines of Bud Walton Arena.
Fortunately for Alabama, the Razorbacks are just 2-6 on the road coming into this weekend’s contest.
Meanwhile, Alabama (17-11, 8-7) is coming off back to back road losses to two of the conference’s best teams, Kentucky and Auburn. While disappointing, Alabama was not considered the favorite in either of those games, so the losses were not altogether surprising and didn’t hurt the Crimson Tide’s chances at making the NCAA Tournament.
Alabama has only lost twice in true home games this season and has played well in front of the large Saturday crowds all year, with this game already being announced as a sell-out.
Let’s look at some keys to victory for the Tide.
Rebounding
Kentucky obliterated Alabama on the boards, earning 20 extra opportunities to score by consistently getting offensive rebounds.
Auburn managed to grab 14 offensive rebounds in its blowout win against the Tide, which certainly makes it a concerning trend.
While rebounding struggles are usually attributed to the big men, it’s been a team problem for Alabama, and Avery Johnson mentioned that the Tide’s long guards have to get more involved on the glass.
The good news for Alabama is that Arkansas is coming to town as the SEC’s worst defensive rebounding team. The Hogs are also near the bottom in offensive rebounding as well. Clearly, style of play has a lot to do with the rebounding effort of the Razorbacks, as they are a transition team by nature and rarely wait around the rim for long.
Alabama can make plausible excuses for some of their rebounding woes as well–Kentucky was super athletic and long, while Auburn shot a bunch of deep shots that lead to long rebounds.
However, there will be no excuse on Saturday against the Hogs, as rebounding is about desire and heart.
Will Alabama have enough of those attributes on the boards?
Getting to the line
While Alabama hasn’t been all that great in terms of free throw percentage this season, free throws are still one of the easiest ways to put up points in basketball.
The Tide have shot almost 70 percent in SEC play, but haven’t gone to the line at the same rate as they did earlier in the year.
They have the ability to do so, however.
In the 2016-2017 season, Dazon Ingram led the nation for a good portion of the year in free throw rate – the number of times you get fouled per the number of times you shoot. He’s fourth in the country this year despite only shooting eight free throws in the last five games total.
That tells you everything you need to know about Ingram’s lack of aggressive offensive play lately.
Collin Sexton also has an incredible knack for getting to the line but has had four games in conference play where he has shot two or less.
I don’t see this happening again on Saturday. Alabama should attack the rim with abandon, looking for easy opportunities to score or come up with fouls.
Consistency from John Petty
Most fans would argue that John Petty has been the most inconsistent Alabama player by far.
I’d say it’s quite the opposite. Petty has been consistently great at home and consistently terrible on the road.
The freshman has yet to shoot better than 27 percent from the field in any SEC road game. At home, he’s shot over 50 percent from the field (and from deep) in every game except for ones against Missouri and Mississippi State.
Petty has been a shining star at times this season at home, and an absolute liability at times on the road.
One of the main problems that I see in Petty’s game is his inability to do any damage inside the arc. He is prone to turning the ball over in traffic because of his unnecessarily high dribble, he almost never takes mid-range jumpers when they are available to him, and his great leaping ability hasn’t translated into big dunks.
Sometimes a shooter is going to have a bad night. It happens. Coaches around the country will tell you, however, that the best way to overcome a bad shooting night is to make a shot.
If Petty starts out rough from 3-point range, he needs to attack the rim and get a floater, a jumper, a dunk, a free-throw or anything to fall.
The only way to do that is to take one of those types of shots. Against Auburn and Kentucky, Petty took 20 field goal attempts. Only one of them was a two-pointer.
That has to change against Arkansas.