Collin Sexton hits buzzer-beater that could push ‘Bama into tourney

That matched Thursday’s 21 second-half points against Texas A&M.

Alabama’s hopes of reaching the NCAA tournament were on life support until Collin Sexton revived them.

Alabama will play in Saturday’s first semifinal game at 1 p.m. ET on ESPN. He finished 10-of-16 from the floor and made six triples as he put on a dynamic scoring spree matching his 31 points in yesterday’s win over Texas A&M.

“We’ve got to win three games to a win a championship”, Pearl said Thursday evening after Auburn’s practice at Washington University.

That’s how you get the job done. “I mean, he’s a tough cover, and he can get downhill and get to the rim”.

Alabama’s run was fueled by Collin Sexton. It was looking more like the Tide’s 22-point win over Texas A&M in January than the two-point loss they suffered at A&M to end the regular season. Alabama led by as many as 12 points in the second half, but the No. 8 seed Aggies (20-12) rallied and went up by one point after Starks’ three-pointer.

I’m still not sure that I’m back to completely trusting Florida, but this looks like a team that’s starting to find its rhythm again.

“[Hall] told me at half-court he’s coming”, Sexton said. “Don’t worry about missing”. That just adds fuel to the fire for us.

With Sexton in the zone, his teammates followed.

In the second-round win over Texas A&M, Donta Hall and Dazon Ingram contributed double-digit point totals. Playing is easy and fun!

Georgia was always going to be competitive in the SEC tournament because it possesses a star in Yante Maten, but its success in St. Louis was going to be determined by his supporting cast. “The second time we played them, I don’t know that we could have played any better than we did in that game”. Hall took a nasty fall late in the second half but was able to walk off the court.

Aggies coach Billy Kennedy said he still feels “really good” about his team’s chances of making the 68-team NCAA bracket. It’s the same attitude that’s looking more and more like it could carry this once underachieving team far this postseason. They would put themselves down double digits early and not have enough energy to complete the comeback at the end of the games. We talked about dominating. That’s when Colin Sexton went coast to coast for a game winning layup as the horn sounded. “Just trying to dominate our opponents, respect our opponents”.

Mustapha Heron didn’t hit the team’s first field goal of the second half until there was just 9:48 remaining the game. Alabama won the rebounding battle, 44-33 and had 36 points in the paint. Bryce Brown shot 1-for-8 from beyond the arc.

“The main thing was we wanted to get him space”, Alabama coach Avery Johnson said. We shot it well, which is what we needed to do. “The reason we called timeout was to not let that happen on a broken play, and he made that happen”.

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Like I said, it is just beginning right here.

I think we’ll see their mindset be somewhere in the middle, and given how focused Auburn should be, I’ll go with the Tigers to advance.