Mark Sears scored a game-high 23 points Saturday and No. 15 Alabama riddled Texas A&M with 18 3-pointers to stay atop the Southeastern Conference with a 100-75 rout in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Rylan Griffen added 17 for the Crimson Tide (18-7, 10-2 SEC), while Latrell Wrightsell Jr. hit for 16 points. Aaron Estrada and reserve Sam Walters kicked in 11 each as Alabama canned 52.1 percent of its field goal attempts and earned a 22-4 advantage in fast-break points.
Sears, Griffen and Wrightsell each drained four 3-pointers for the Tide, which got 3-point makes from eight different players. They shot an impressive 43.9 percent from the arc, giving them an effective field goal percentage of nearly 65 percent.
Tyrece Radford scored 22 points for the Aggies (15-10, 6-6), which made only 37.8 percent of their field-goal attempts and went 4 of 23 from the 3-point line. That helped cancel out a 49-38 advantage on the boards, which included a whopping 26 offensive rebounds that led to 21 points.
A&M also got 14 points and eight rebounds from Solomon Washington, 12 points from Henry Coleman and 10 from leading scorer Wade Taylor IV. He was limited to 4-of-15 shooting from the field. Andersson Garcia collected 12 rebounds but the Aggies managed only six assists on the day.
The first half quickly boiled down to two factors — could Texas A&M do enough damage on the offensive glass to make up for sub-par shooting and could Alabama use the 3-point line to scuttle the Aggies’ attempts to slow the pace?
The answers trended the Tide’s way fairly fast. The lead got to double figures less than seven minutes into the game when Jarin Stevenson hit one of their eight first-half 3-pointers to make it 18-8. They hit 50 percent from the arc in the half.
A 3-point play by Coleman brought A&M within 32-28 with 6:11 left but the rest of the half was controlled by Alabama. It ripped off 11 straight points, capped by Sears’ 3-pointer, and went to intermission with a 49-35 advantage.
–Field Level Media