Recap: UAB 83, Tulsa 51
The Blazers got back on track on Saturday, manhandling Tulsa in the series' largest-ever blowout.
The UAB men’s basketball team smothered Tulsa on Saturday afternoon, turning in its best all-around effort of the season en route to a dominant 83-51 victory. Ja’Borri McGhee scored 8 points in the game’s first 5 minutes, Christian Coleman racked up 14 points and 13 rebounds, and Alejandro Vasquez paced all scorers with a season-high 27 points, connecting on 4 of his 9 three-point attempts. UAB improved to 8-7 (1-1) and moved from 134th in KenPom to 123rd.
Eric Konkol and crew couldn’t buy a bucket. After sticking with the Blazers until the U16 media timeout, the Golden Hurricane went stone-cold from the field; UAB used separate 14-2 and 13-0 runs to blow the game open by the 10-minute mark. Tulsa didn’t make a field goal for the final 6 minutes of the opening period, only scoring when a last-second Bradley Ezewiro foul gifted TU’s Dwon Odom three free throws. The halftime score was 44-22 in favor of the Blazers.
Whatever Konkol told his squad in the locker room didn’t work. UAB opened the second half with another 14-2 spurt, as the combined efforts of the three-headed monster of Vasquez, Coleman, and McGhee ballooned the Blazers’ lead to over 30 points by the U16 media timeout.
Although Tulsa tried everything to claw back in the game, giving reserves Jesaiah McWright and Jaye Nash significant minutes in the faint hope of finding a spark, the Green and Gold did not budge, marking a welcome departure from Tuesday’s loss to North Texas. Makhi Myles, Will Shaver, Marquis Hargrove, and Ryan Donohoo comfortably entered the game with 2 minutes remaining.
Yaxel Lendeborg failed to score double-digit points for only the third time this season, while Butta Johnson, Tony Toney, and Tyren Moore had quiet statistical days.
Alejandro Vasquez Breaks Out
It’s been a bit of a frustrating season for Alejandro Vasquez, whom multiple prognosticators selected to their preseason all-conference teams last offseason. Although AJ has been among the Blazers’ most productive players by Evan Miyakawa’s BPR, he simply hasn’t seen his three-pointer fall — a rough late-November to mid-December stretch saw him miss 19 of 24 triples.
That wasn’t the case on Saturday. Vasquez turned in a performance reminiscent of his dominant AAC title game against Temple, making 4 of 9 threes, getting to the rim at will, and almost single-handedly carrying UAB’s scoring burden during some stretches. The senior wing has now scored 15 or more points in three consecutive games for the first time since March 2024.
Andy Kennedy was thrilled by Vasquez’s display of form, saying:
I thought we were really engaged defensively in the first half, and then AJ got going. Man, is it good to see him make some shots? Because I think it just relieves some pressure. I thought Ja'Borri did a good job of setting the tone of us driving the basketball early. And then AJ settled in. I think he had 14 in the first half, 13 in the second half for 27…
It's just now about consistency. The mind is a powerful thing. He played good against North Texas. He played good tonight. Hopefully, that's the catalyst that he needs to exhale and really, really give us some leadership from that wing position on the perimeter.
Vasquez himself was equally satisfied with his performance:
It felt great, man. Seeing that thing go in felt good… It just fires me up. I just want to shoot more and more as I see it go in… I feel like I was in a slump. I kind of got out of my slump. Took me a little while, but I definitely feel confident now that I'm playing [well].
Defensive Excellence
Entering Saturday afternoon, UAB sat at nearly 300th in KenPom’s defensive rankings, a number that would be far and away the worst in program history if it held. Perhaps the most egregious example of the Blazers’ porousness came on Tuesday in Denton: the Green and Gold allowed UNT to post an offensive rating of 168.7 in the second half, blowing what was once an 18-point lead.
Although Tulsa is by no means an offensive juggernaut, it was encouraging to see the Blazers hold the visitors to a measly 0.71 points per possession and move up nearly 40 spots in KenPom’s defensive rankings. Most notably, UAB harassed Tulsa’s Keaston Willis for 40 minutes, barely allowing the Golden Hurricane sniper to get a shot off. Averaging 13.1 points and 7.1 3PA per game, Willis finished the afternoon with 4 points on 0-3 three-point shooting.
Kennedy was deeply pleased with his team’s defensive performance, saying:
Keaston Willis is a really good player. I think if we all had to pick somebody from our league that you would want to represent you in a game of HORSE, he might be my number one pick. I think he is a dead-eye shooter. So we just tried to make sure that we didn't let him get comfortable with his touches, and our guys did a great job. I thought we lost him one time, and he just didn't have any rhythm, and he missed it. So we were fortunate that it wasn't his night, and I thought our guys did a really good job…
[This was] by far our best defensive performance of the year. Now that ceiling was pretty low, obviously, but [it was] by far our best 40 minutes.
Kennedy specifically praised Tony Toney when discussing the team’s overall defensive effort — the guard racked up 7 points, 4 assists, 3 rebounds, a steal, and a breakaway dunk.
“I thought Tony was tremendous defensively,” he said. “[He] made some real plays in the open floor.”
The Blazers also:
Held Tyshawn Archie, Tulsa’s lead guard, to 0 points on 9 shots.
Held guard Dwon Odom, by far Tulsa’s most efficient offensive player, to 9 points and 5 turnovers.
Held guard Jaye Nash, last week’s AAC Freshman of the Week, to 5 points on 1-9 shooting.
Held forward Justin Amadi, Tulsa’s most efficient foul-drawer, to 0 free-throw attempts.
Held Tulsa’s reserves to 6-23 combined shooting.
Almost nothing the Golden Hurricane tried on offense was effective. The below chart from hoop-explorer breaks down TU’s play type efficiency, with green corresponding to success and red corresponding to failure.
Odom and Archie, who typically score 0.86 points per play on rim attacks, were held to just 0.39 points per play on rim attacks; although both guards are more than capable of getting downhill, neither found any success on the interior, a testament to the Blazer defense. Nash was also an offensive non-factor, missing all 7 of his two-point attempts. The Golden Hurricane were forced to get out of their comfort zone and lean on their frontcourt. Freshman center Ian Smikle put up 17 points on 80% shooting, but the remainder of Tulsa’s big men — whose limitations I mentioned in the preview — scored a total of 6 points.
Greg Gordon’s Departure
Early yesterday afternoon, Steve Irvine reported that UAB wing Greg Gordon, who hadn’t seen the court since December 5th, has left the team for personal reasons. Gordon was spotted watching a basketball game at Iona College — his former school — on Friday night. Although Gordon was a highly-touted offseason transfer acquisition, he never gelled into UAB’s rotation, averaging just 13 minutes and 3.1 points per game in 7 appearances. He missed UAB’s Virgin Islands trip with visa issues; his December absences were chalked up to the flu.
“Ultimately, he made a decision that he wanted to leave the team for an extended period of time,” Kennedy said. “We wish him nothing but the best.”
Following James White’s December 2023 departure, this is the second consecutive year in which a UAB player has left the team in the middle of the season.
What’s Next?
The Blazers return to Bartow on Tuesday, January 7th, to take on the Tulane Green Wave. As Kennedy said:
Very seldom in this league do you play Saturday games. And I don't know if we've ever played a Saturday-Tuesday turn...
But very seldom do you get Saturday games, and Saturday-Tuesday is a quick turn against a team in Tulane that plays later this afternoon at home against UTSA. They play an unorthodox style with that matchup zone for 40 minutes that Ron Hunter's famous for. So we'll take this. We'll get back to work tomorrow.
Tulane ended up beating UTSA by nearly 30 points; it marked their second consecutive dominant conference win, as they beat Charlotte by 15 on the road last week. Ron Hunter’s squad struggled mightily during non-conference play, at one point losing five games in a row and dropping to 232nd in KenPom, but the Green Wave are undefeated since December 14th and are 2-0 in the league.
Tulane is now 169th in KenPom. They will present a challenging puzzle for the Blazers to solve on short rest.