Yale basketball coach James Jones, if he were to learn that Alabama was without point guard Labaron Philon on Wednesday, Feb. 25 in a 100-75 rout of Mississippi State, wouldn’t be at all surprised by the outcome.
Almost two months ago, the Crimson Tide star sat against Yale in the only other game he’s missed, and the result looked much the same against MSU. Both were blowout wins for Alabama, both owing to a head-spinning barrage of 3-pointers.
This time, freshman do-it-all Amari Allen was ablaze from deep with 23 points, going to the half with 18 on 5-of-5 shooting from 3-point range. On perhaps the deepest of those, he drew a foul above the top of the key and converted a four-point play. It was an explosive display, but Allen wasn’t alone. Enough teammates joined him in the 3-point party for the team to finish 22 of 50. The performance evoked a fair comparison to the Crimson Tide’s 113-88 NCAA tournament rout of BYU 11 months ago, which featured a record 25 threes.
Scoring 100 points without the team’s leading scorer isn’t easy.
But it was much the same story when UA played host to Yale on Dec. 29 minus Philon, who was out with a leg injury. The Crimson Tide launched 54 3-pointers, connecting on 22 for a 41% clip. Latrell Wrightsell and Aden Holloway canned five each, and Houston Mallette added four. Yale had no answers defensively as one of college basketball’s deepest backcourts showed why.
That was Yale, you say? True enough, the Bulldogs would be first-round underdogs in the NCAA tournament. But at 21-4 and atop the Ivy League standings, they’re well on their way to being there. That’s more than can be said for MSU, now 13-15 (5-10 SEC).
None of this is to suggest, of course, that Alabama can afford to be without its best player. Nate Oats even joked about it.
“I guess we just need to sit Philon more, huh? The offense clicks, we get 22 threes every time we sit him,” Oats said. “Maybe I’ll see if he wants to sit Saturday.”
Philon will be critical to any NCAA tournament success for Nate Oats’ seventh Alabama team. But twice now, it has shot the lights out with the sophomore unavailable. UA has shot 50-plus 3-pointers just three times this season, twice with Philon sitting. Ball movement was clinically good against Mississippi State, with the extra pass consistently ending with wide open 3-point tries.
“(Philon is) arguably the head of the snake, and it didn’t seem like from where I sat that they missed a beat,” MSU coach Chris Jans said.
No, they didn’t. It remains to be seen whether Philon will be available when Alabama travels to Tennessee on Saturday, and even for a team that’s loaded at guard, his return can’t come soon enough for Oats.
But the offense isn’t lost without him.
Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama basketball minus Labaron Philon? Threes have fallen twice now