Preview: Looking to Bounce Back, UAB Hosts Alabama A&M
Looking to recover from one of the most frustrating losses in program history, the Blazers take on an old rival.
Game Information
UAB (5-6, KenPom #147) vs. Alabama A&M (4-6, KenPom #359)
📅: Wednesday, December 18th, 2024
🕒: 6:30 PM CST
🏟️: Bartow Arena
📺: ESPN+
📻: WJQX 100.5 FM
Trends and Odds
UAB enters tonight 5-6 overall in the wake of a 98-89 overtime loss to Arkansas State that saw the Blazers blow a 27-point lead, a collapse that matched the largest by any Division 1 team since 2018. The Blazers have fallen nearly 50 spots in KenPom over the last month. Alabama A&M enters tonight 4-6 overall but only 1-6 against Division 1 competition, having lost three consecutive games. KenPom ranks the Bulldogs the nation’s sixth-worst team.
UAB is 2-0 against teams in the KenPom bottom 70, having won both games by an average of 20.5 points, while the Bulldogs have been dominated by teams in the KenPom top 150, losing 93-45 to Georgia and 82-44 to Lipscomb. The Bulldogs are also yet to win a road game this season.
FanDuel gives the Blazers a 96.77% implied probability of beating Alabama A&M and has set the spread at 21.5, while KenPom gives the Blazers a 96% probability of beating Alabama A&M and has set the spread at 19.
Series History
UAB holds a 15-0 record against A&M, the Blazers’ best against any opponent
UAB and Alabama A&M first met on November 23rd, 1999. Murry Bartow’s squad entered the game on the heels of a close loss at #3 Auburn, a miserable shooting performance having prevented UAB from pulling the upset. The disheartened Blazers took their frustrations out on the overmatched Bulldogs, turning in a display of grit so impressive it prompted the Birmingham Post-Herald to title its article about the game “‘A’ for effort.” In distinct late-90s style, UAB beat reporter Cary Estes wrote:
Sure, the Backstreet Boys have some interesting moves and gyrations. But will Howie or A.J. or any of the Boys run full speed and dive headfirst over a table and onto a concrete floor?
For that kind of action Tuesday night, one needed to go to Bartow Arena and check out the Southside Boys. Otherwise known as the UAB Blazers.
The Blazers showed more hustle and grit and desire in Tuesday’s 82-53 victory over Alabama A&M than last season’s UAB team demonstrated in an entire month.
The result catalyzed a 9-4 stretch that would see UAB take down a ranked Louisville, along with strong Fresno State and South Florida teams. This renaissance was repeated in 2023, when a once-struggling UAB won 12 of its next 15 after beating the Bulldogs. Here’s to hoping this year’s Blazers, whose lack of physicality has been decried by Andy Kennedy, can parlay tonight’s game into a similar turnaround.
Alabama A&M Scouting Report
A&M head coach Otis Hughley is a basketball lifer with one of the most diverse backgrounds of any sitting Division 1 head coach. Over the course of his 31-year career, the 60-year-old has made stops at the high school, college, and NBA levels, has coached in China and Taiwan, and has coached the men’s and women’s national teams of multiple African and Asian countries. He actively leads the Senegalese women’s team.
Hughley arrived in Huntsville in 2022 and orchestrated swift improvement — under his hand, the Bulldogs reached the .500 mark in conference play for two consecutive seasons, a feat the program hadn’t accomplished since 2006. AAMU’s current record of 4-6 doesn’t look impressive, but each of the prior two Bulldog teams started similarly poorly.
Defense
Although the analytical rankings of this year’s Alabama A&M squad are the lowest they’ve been since Hughley’s tenure began, A&M’s defensive profile is very similar to what it was this time last season: roughly 350th in KenPom and solid at the rim but porous in the paint and behind the arc.
The Bulldogs’ strong rim defense can be attributed in large part to big man Chad Moodie, perhaps A&M’s best player. Although Moodie is by no means a traditional center, standing 6’8” tall, he’s nonetheless one of the SWAC’s best shot-blockers, currently rocking a block rate of 3.4%. Last season, Moodie finished the year with a block rate of 7.4%, good for a top-60 mark in the nation.
A&M’s other bigs are 7-footer Saliou Seye, 6-foot-9 Clance Crosby, 7-foot-3 Bol Kuir, and 6-foot-9 Angok Anyang. Hughley uses one of the deepest rotations in college basketball, sometimes burning through 14 players in the same game, and no member of the Bulldog frontcourt save Moodie sees more than 16 minutes an outing. Seye, a UTRGV transfer who isn’t much of a factor on the offensive end, is Moodie’s typical frontcourt partner, currently holding a block rate of 8.2%. Crosby is an impressive athlete that hasn’t seen much playing time, while Kuir and Anyang are afterthoughts.
The Bulldogs can swat shots at the rim, but their lack of skill makes their overall interior defense weak. A&M’s opponents have shot 54.8% against them in the paint, one of the highest rates in the country. The Bulldogs had the same problem in non-conference play last season, and UAB took full advantage of it during the teams’ December 2023 meeting, when Yaxel Lendeborg and Javian Davis combined to shoot 9-13 from the floor.
Hughley's 2024 squad has also been crippled by a 41.6% three-point percentage allowed. This number is absolutely unsustainable — as Will Warren recently wrote, the Bulldogs are major candidates for positive regression in this area and have been the victims of some bad luck, as their opponents have shot a red-hot 40.8% on unguarded jump shots.
Nevertheless, the fact that AAMU allows their opponents to generate so many unguarded jump shots in the first place speaks to their poor perimeter defense. UAB will get open looks — it will be up to them to make them. The Blazers have connected on just 28.6% of their unguarded jump shots this season, one of the lowest rates in the nation.
Offense
Owing to the team’s aforementioned massive rotation, it’s hard to nail down just one leader of the A&M offense. Point guard Darius Ford initiates most possessions and takes more shots than any of his teammates, but he’s been one of the nation’s least efficient players, having made just 33.7% of his 95 field goal attempts. A capable perimeter slasher, Moodie is the team’s most reliable option, doing all his damage on the interior. Wing A.C. Bryant is the team’s primary spot-up shooter, having made 45.5% of his three-point attempts (albeit on low volume).
Whoever the leader is, the results haven’t been good. The Bulldogs are void of dynamic ballhandling, turning the ball over at a nearly 20% rate and struggling to create open looks inside. They further lack finishing talent — no A&M guard save Lorenzo Downey has made more than 47% of their shots at the rim. This is compounded by A&M’s lack of production on the interior, as no big man other than Moodie is a consistent offensive option. These factors all contribute to the Bulldogs’ team two-point field goal percentage of 41.3%, which stands as a bottom-ten mark in the nation. There’s nothing going from beyond the arc, either — A&M has made less than 30% of their three-pointers.
Last season, the Bulldogs compensated for their lack of shooters by drawing fouls, posting the second-highest free throw rate in the country. Although A&M still gets to the line at a higher-than-average rate, they have been crippled by the departure of guard Dallin Smith, one of the country’s most prolific whistle-drawers. Last season, Smith posted a mindblowing free throw rate of 81.7 — you may remember him from his 27-point, 10-free throw performance against UAB. Bryant and Moodie both know their way to the charity stripe, but AAMU no longer has an equivalent to Smith.
Outlook
UAB needs to win this one by several dozen. Alabama A&M is the sixth-worst team in the nation by KenPom. The Blazers have a pronounced skill advantage on the interior, will get plenty of open looks from three, and shouldn’t face any serious defensive challenges. It was the Alabama A&M game that turned the 1999 season around; it was the Alabama A&M game that turned last season around. Let’s hope for the best.