SEC basketball fever became a full blown disease on Tuesday night when Alabama and South Carolina played the longest game of the season. It took four overtimes for the Crimson Tide and Gamecocks to decide a winner, but eventually Alabama came away with a 90-86 victory.
South Carolina-Alabama played 4 OTs in longest bad game of the year
Our thoughts are with those who watched this entire game.
Jeff Blake-USA TODAY Sports
Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
This was the first four-overtime game of the season and the first since UConn’s Jalen Adams made a 70-foot three-pointer against Cincinnati to force a fourth overtime in the American conference tournament last March.
Was this a good game? Let’s go to the tape:
This was probably not a good game.
The two teams combined to shoot 83 free throws and shot just 22.4 percent from three-point range. There were 38 combined turnovers and only 18 combined assists.
Now: this is a great win for Avery Johnson’s Tide. It’s their first road win over a ranked team since 2004. South Carolina entered this week’s AP Poll at No. 19 and were projected as a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament by our own Chris Dobbertean earlier in the day. ‘Bama is now 14-9 overall and 7-4 in the conference with a monster recruiting class coming in next year, headlined by five-star point guard Collin Sexton.
If nothing else, Sindarius Thornwell had himself a game for South Carolina:
‘Bama’s reward for winning? A date at Rupp Arena with Kentucky on Saturday. Hopefully they get some rest before that.
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