The Alabama men’s basketball team secured a 96-84 victory over Auburn on Saturday night at Coleman Coliseum, completing a season sweep of their in-state rival. The win concluded the regular season for Alabama, who finished with a 23-8 overall record and a 13-5 mark in the Southeastern Conference (SEC).
With this result, Alabama clinched second place in the SEC standings and will enter next week’s SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament in Nashville as the No. 2 seed.
Guards Labaron Philon Jr. and Aden Holloway led Alabama with 21 points each. Amari Allen added 16 points, London Jemison scored 11, and Aiden Sherrell contributed 10 points. Auburn was paced by Kevin Overton, who recorded 24 points and five rebounds.
Head coach Nate Oats commented after the game: “A lot of positives to come from this game. We have the best student section in the SEC, and I really appreciate what they’ve given us all year. It’s great to get a win on senior night. The three we celebrated are some of the best seniors as far as culture-wise. I am very disappointed Houston Mallette didn’t get to score on senior night. He doesn’t really care, and to me, that’s why he’s so great. He just cared that we won and that he ended up winning the hard hat. (Latrell) Wrightsell has come on great, and he didn’t score it as well as he has been tonight. Noah (Williamson) has been great with his attitude and with everything we need from him, so those three guys to get a win on senior night, I couldn’t be happier for them.
“I think we did a great job in the first 25 minutes, building up a 25-point lead. We haven’t done a great job closing out games when we have leads, and I told guys that after the game. We fouled them too much and took bad shots and guys started hunting for their own points, so I’m a little disappointed with how we closed the game. We had the right mentality in the first half and the defense has been great lately. We’ve forced double-digit turnovers in four of the last five games, which has been an emphasis for us lately.
“They tried to take away the three-point line tonight. We have had double-digit three-pointers in 11 straight games and we didn’t get that tonight, but we scored 58 points in the paint. That is fine with me because we try to play the most efficient basketball we can. If we made some free throws, we would’ve scored 100 on them, but we still scored 75 points in the paint and at the line combined. We also did a pretty good job on the offensive boards, if you look at second chance points and points off turnovers, which we just lost in a drastic fashion to Georgia we were plus-23 in those departments combined.”
Alabama held control throughout most of the contest, leading for more than 39 minutes without ever trailing Auburn during regulation play.
The Crimson Tide outrebounded Auburn by a margin of 42-28; Latrell Wrightsell Jr., one of Alabama’s honored seniors on Senior Night, collected seven rebounds—a season high for him.
Labaron Philon surpassed 1,000 career points early in this matchup—becoming only the fourth-fastest player at Alabama to reach that milestone within just 66 games.
Defensively strong performances continued for Alabama as they forced more than ten turnovers for their fourth time over five recent outings.
The team also excelled offensively by grabbing nineteen offensive rebounds—their highest total during conference play this season—and outscored Auburn by double digits for their first time since facing them during the 2020-21 campaign.
In terms of scoring distribution across halves: Philon led all scorers at halftime with sixteen points; Alabama built its largest lead at twenty-five before Auburn narrowed it late but could not overcome Alabama’s advantage inside or on second-chance opportunities.
Next week Alabama will compete at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville as part of the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament. Their opening game is scheduled for Friday evening at six o’clock Central Time; coverage will be available via The SEC Network.
