Mark Sears scored a game-high 23 points on 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 points 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 apiece as Alabama canned 52.1 percent of its field-goal attempts and earned a 22-4 advantage in fastbreak points.
Sears, Griffen and Wrightsell each drained four 3-pointers for the Tide, who got 3-point makes from eight different players. Alabama shot an impressive 43.9 percent from beyond the arc as a team.
Tyrece Radford scored 22 points for the Aggies (15-10, 6-6), who made only 37.8 percent of their field-goal attempts and went 4 of 23 from beyond 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.
Texas A&M also got 14 points and eight rebounds from Solomon Washington, 12 points from Henry Coleman III and 10 from leading scorer Wade Taylor IV. Taylor 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 subpar 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 Alabama’s eight first-half 3-pointers to make it 18-8. The Crimson Tide hit 50 percent of their threes before the break.
A three-point play by Coleman brought Texas 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, a run capped by Sears’ 3-pointer, and went to intermission with a 49-35 advantage.
–Field Level Media
