Aggressive Tide falls to Tulane

TUSCALOOSA | If there was one word to describe the University of Alabama women’s basketball team’s game against Tulane on Saturday afternoon, that word would be “aggressive.”

Aggressive was how Crimson Tide coach Stephany Smith described her team’s defensive play against the Green Wave following the game. Aggressiveness is what allowed her team to come back from a 14-point deficit midway through the second half to cut the lead to five with 5:41 remaining.

Unfortunately, aggressiveness also resulted in too many team fouls for the Tide, and the Green Wave’s 75 percent success in free throw shooting put them over the edge as Alabama dropped its season opener to Tulane, 64-56.

“I was proud of our defensive aggressiveness,” Smith said. “I hate that we fouled so much because of it, but we fouled in two exhibition games because we were very lethargic on defense and we were very reactive to plays.

“I think tonight we tried to be a step ahead and we were very aggressive, but anxiety took over too many times and we sent them to the line too many times.”

After managing to tie the game right before halftime, the Green Wave opened up the second half with a 26-12 run to put them up 51-37 with 10:30 remaining.

Instead of rolling over and dying however, the Tide responded to adversity by scoring nine unanswered points to make the score 51-46 with 5:41 left in the game.

The Green Wave’s Ashley Langford and Chassity Brown then put the team on their backs for the remaining five-and-a-half minutes, scoring a combined 13 points to enable them to hold off the Tide and walk away victors. Of those 13 points, 11 of them came on free throws. Langford credited Tulane head coach Lisa Stockton’s stressing of free throw shooting in practice for the team’s success in that facet of the game.

“Coach Stocton had us shoot 350 free throws for a week,” said Langford, who finished the afternoon with 18 points, tying a career high. “She told us Sunday that we had to have it done by Friday, so it’s definitely something that’s important for our team.

“As aggressive as Alabama was, we knew that sometimes being overly aggressive meant they were going to get fouls.”

Alabama led for most of the first half before Tulane tied the game 25-25 with 21 seconds before halftime on two free throw shots by Tiffany Aidoo.

Tulane’s Brown was the only player other than Langford to score double-digit points. She finished the game with 15.

Daleisha Carn led Alabama in scoring with 15 points on the night, and was the only Tide player to score in double digits. She fouled out at the 5:32 mark in the second half.

With the season opener in the books, Smith and her staff are eager hit the film in order to point out the positives, as well as things Alabama needs to improve on.

“My staff will be here tonight and we’ll be grading film, and we’ll cut edit, and we’ll show them the things that they did well and the things they need to do better,” Smith said. “It’s a disappointing loss, and it’s one obviously I wish was in the win column, but I did see a lot of things that we did positive, and that’s all that you need to really focus on when you have so much youth.”

Alabama will play in Birmingham on Tuesday against Samford. Tipoff for the game is 7:30 p.m. and will mark the grand opening of the new Pete Hanna Center.