The 2025 Alabama basketball team has a lot of potential once again, as it showed after beating St. John's. It comes down to how Alabama runs its offense, and Labaron Philon Jr. is the biggest key this year. Philon Jr. is the star for the Crimson Tide, and he had a fantastic game against Gonzaga, despite Alabama losing. In response, head coach Nate Oats asked for even more from Philon Jr. after Alabama struggled down the stretch.
Labaron Philon Jr. has asserted himself as the best player for the Crimson Tide this year. He had a fantastic game against Gonzaga, scoring a career-high 29 points in the loss. However, halfway through the second half, he never scored again. Oats challenged Philon Jr. to show more for the Crimson Tide down the stretch, saying he needs to be better and that they can't have him go cold as he did in the second half.
“They came out of the one timeout in the zone, and he turned it over,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said during the postgame press conference. “He’s got to be better. I mean, he scored it well tonight. Everybody knows he can score it and get in the paint pretty easily. He can finish it at the rim well.
“I thought our bigs did a good job of kind of, in ball screens and then sealing them off to give him some pretty easy layups that he converted. He made a couple of threes early in the game. They adjusted a little bit, they went zone. I think they switched some. We’re going to see that.”
Oats also said that Gonzaga switched a lot against the Crimson Tide, while they did not switch much. Oats also admitted that it completely caught them off guard.
“So I think we’re going to see different coverages, especially in ball screens, than what maybe some teams typically do, just because he does a good job. I think he was carving them up a little bit there with their quick showing back, and they adjusted and switched.
“And I don’t think we did a great job attacking their switching. I don’t think we did a great job attacking their zone. They did a good job kind of switching stuff up, and he got slowed down there.”
Oats was hard on Philon because he knows how talented he really is. However, he stressed that the loss was not solely his fault. Alabama has the potential to be a great team this year, but they need to fix some issues and have Philon be consistent, especially after he came back after initially committing to the NBA.
