The Alabama men’s basketball team, ranked No. 16 nationally, saw its eight-game winning streak end with a 97-88 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs on Tuesday night at Stegeman Coliseum in Athens.
Alabama, now 22-8 overall and 12-5 in SEC play, was led by Labaron Philon Jr., who scored 26 points along with four rebounds and three assists. Latrell Wrightsell contributed 19 points, hitting five shots from beyond the arc. The Crimson Tide forced 14 turnovers and collected 11 steals—its highest total in SEC competition this season.
Georgia improved to 21-9 (9-8 SEC), led by Kanon Catchings’ career-best performance of 32 points on 12-of-20 shooting, including seven three-pointers.
Following the game, Alabama head coach Nate Oats said: “I gotta give Georgia a lot of credit, they needed the win and played like it. They came out, played harder than us, turned us over – they had 21 points of turnovers and destroyed us on the second chance points. If you add those two numbers up, that’s 46 points for them to our 24. When you lose those that battle by 22 points, it is going to be really hard to win the game. We didn’t get our first second-chance point until 12 minutes left in the game. Our rebounding has been killing us lately. For our leading rebounder to have five and then two people with four of them, it’s going to be hard to win games.
“We’re also good at giving up career highs to people and we did it tonight with (Kanon) Catchings. He was super comfortable and got a lot of open shots off and ended up with 32 points. We had no resistance on him all night. Big credit to Georgia for having their guys ready to go, they’re fighting for a lot, but so are we with SEC tournament seeding.
“We have some young guys that have no idea what it takes to win at this level, particularly on the road, and this was our last chance to get a quality road win. This was our third time coming off a great road win or neutral site win and then we dropped the following game. We’ve got to get some maturity about us, and our guys need to understand that nothing comes easy in this league.”
Alabama’s defensive effort included recording its most steals against an SEC opponent this year—surpassing its previous high set against South Florida—and extending its streak of making at least ten three-pointers per game to eleven consecutive contests. The team’s sixteen made threes marked both a season-high for Alabama against SEC opponents and were the most allowed by Georgia all year; previously no team had made more than fourteen threes against them.
Georgia’s fourteen turnovers matched its third-highest total of the season; their last higher mark was seventeen turnovers versus Arkansas in January.
At the free throw line, Alabama converted twenty-two out of twenty-four attempts (91.7 percent), marking just their second game above ninety percent from the stripe this season.
Philon Jr.’s twenty-six points represented the second-highest individual total scored against Georgia during this campaign.
The contest began with Georgia jumping out to an early lead before Alabama responded with an eight-to-two run that tied the score at eight apiece after four minutes. Turnovers plagued Alabama later in the half as Georgia capitalized on mistakes for a ten-point run that put them ahead by eight midway through the period.
Despite trailing by as many as eleven before halftime, Alabama narrowed the deficit but still entered intermission down seven after Kanon Catchings scored twenty first-half points for Georgia.
In the second half, Georgia quickly extended its lead back into double digits before another surge from Alabama brought them within six midway through the period. Both teams traded three-point baskets late in regulation before Georgia pulled away again inside three minutes remaining.
Alabama will conclude its regular season at home against Auburn with tipoff scheduled for Thursday evening at Coleman Coliseum; ESPN will broadcast the matchup.
