Men's basketball scouting report: No. 4 Arizona vs. Alabama, 9 p.m. Wednesday

No. 4 Arizona (8-1) vs. Alabama (6-4)

Footprint Center; Phoenix

9 p.m. Wednesday

ESPN

1290-AM, 107.5-FM

PROBABLE STARTERS

ALABAMA

G Mark Sears (6-1 senior)

G Aaron Estrada (6-3 senior)

F Rylan Griffen (6-6 sophomore)

F Grant Nelson (6-11 senior)

C Mohamed Wague (6-7 freshman)

ARIZONA

G Kylan Boswell (6-2 sophomore)

G Caleb Love (6-4 senior)

F Pelle Larsson (6-6 senior)

F Keshad Johnson (6-7 senior)

C Oumar Ballo (7-0 senior)

How they match up

The series: Alabama leads Arizona 3-1 all-time, though the two split a home-and-home series during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons. The Wildcats won 88-82 at McKale Center on Dec. 9, 2017, when Deandre Ayton had 29 points and 18 rebounds and Allonzo Trier hit 14 of 16 free throws. Alabama won 76-73 on Dec. 9, 2018, when Kira Lewis scored 20 points while making 4 of 5 3-pointers. Alabama also knocked Arizona out of the 1985 and 1990 NCAA Tournaments.

Game agreement: Arizona and Alabama are playing the first game of a semi-neutral home-and-home series, in which they will also play next season in Birmingham, Ala. Wednesday’s game is also the finale of the Jerry Colangelo Hall of Fame Series that features the women’s and men’s teams of both ASU and UA. The ASU women will open play against Fresno State at noon, followed by the UA women at 2:30 against Gonzaga. The ASU men’s team will open the night session against Northwestern at 6:30, with the two UAs following at about 9 p.m.

Alabama overview: If any returning high-major coach had a busier offseason than UA’s Tommy Lloyd, it was Alabama’s Nate Oats. While Lloyd had just seven players lined up for this season entering last May, Oats lost two players to the NBA Draft and another five to the transfer portal – including current Arizona guard Jaden Bradley and onetime Wildcat commit Jahvon Quinerly, who moved on to Memphis.

But like Lloyd, Oats also pulled talent out of the transfer portal, including three starters: Guard Aaron Estrada, a two-time Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year at Hofstra; big man Mohamed Wague, who left West Virginia after coach Bob Huggins was fired, and forward Grant Nelson, who also became an Arizona target last spring after proving himself as an elite stretch-four at mid-major North Dakota State.

Meanwhile, a transfer from 2022, Mark Spears moved into the point guard role vacated by Quinerly and Bradley while also leading Alabama in scoring.

With whomever he recruits, Oats runs a similarly fast-paced tempo as Arizona, and the Tide are efficient: Alabama shoots 57.0% from two (ranking 22nd nationally) and 39.1% from 3 (19th). It also has the 37th highest free-throw rate, their 40.8% ratio of free throws taken to field goals taken, and they hit 78% of their free throws when they get to the line.

Defensively, however, Alabama can give it all back, and some. The Tide ranks 105 in defensive efficiency, allowing two-point shooters to hit 57.0% against them while Alabama’s opponents make 39.1% from 3.

Ranked No. 24 to start the season, Alabama has fallen out of the poll while playing what Kenpom rates the 20th toughest nonconference schedule in Division I. Alabama beat Oregon 99-91 last month in Florida but has lost to every other Top 50 Kenpom team it has faced: Ohio State, Clemson, Purdue and Creighton. The Tide played Purdue in the Toronto hometown of Boilermaker center Zach Edey on Dec. 9, then played at Creighton on Dec. 16.

He said it: “They are a team whose record is a little of a lie. They played a really tough schedule and probably weren’t very lucky. If they were 9-1, it wouldn’t have been a shock to me. They’ve been one of the top offensive teams in the country in the last three years.

“They want to space you out, drive and kick to get layups or 3s, and they’re a really good rebounding team. They’re really good at playing with pace. I think they do it in a little different way than we do. We’re a little more inside-out. They definitely want to drive the lane and penetrate and they’re OK shooting a lot of 3s, very much an NBA offense for certain things. Mostly they’ll have one action like a pick-and-roll or something and they play out of it. It’s literally as simple as that, and there is some magic in simplicity.

Sears “took a big jump, Estrada was a really good player at Hofstra who has been really good for them. Nelson was is a really talented, wing forward kind of player. He’s great for what they do and their way of playing is very unique in college basketball.

(Their big men) “screen and roll and rebound. We’ve played some good offensive rebounding teams, and they will normally have one or two players who are very good at it. This is a team where all five of them basically average more than one offensive rebound per game.

“They actually play really, really hard on defense with a lot of ball pressure. Part of the reason for their bad defensive numbers is they’ve played a lot of really good offenses, and they probably are still trying to figure out what to do in pick-and-roll defense because historically they kept the big very low, and this year, they’re not so committed to it.”

— UA assistant coach Riccardo Fois, who scouted the Crimson Tide..

Key players

ALABAMA – Mark Sears

Not recruited by Alabama, or anyone in the SEC, out of Muscle Shoals, Ala., in high school, Sears has worked his way up the college basketball ladder. Starting his career at Ohio, he took an Alabama offer as a transfer before this season and moved into a standout role this season. He’s an ideal fit for the Tide’s uptempo offense, equally comfortable driving and kicking it out – or taking a pass on the perimeter and shooting.

ARIZONA — Oumar Ballo

Because of Ballo, Alabama coach Nate Oats said he expected facing the Wildcats would be similar to the “Edey game,” the way Alabama had to deal with Purdue center Zach Edey, finding a way to guard Ballo with smaller bigs who can be foul-prone.

SIDELINES

When Buffalo roamed

Unlike the last time he coached against Arizona, Nate Oats and his players probably won’t be able to sneak up on anybody Wednesday.

In the first round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament, Oats led Buffalo to one of the toughest postseason losses in Arizona history. The 13th-seeded Bulls handed fourth-seeded Arizona and star center Deandre Ayton 89-68, ending a long season of off-the-court turmoil that began when the FBI’s investigation became public in September 2017.

Buffalo shot 54.8% from the field, hitting 15 of 30 3-pointers while Arizona made just 2 of 18 3s. Ayton’s double double of 14 points and 13 rebounds wasn’t nearly enough.

“We shot it really well from 3 and they were still playing two traditional bigs, with Ayton and (Dusan) Ristic, so Ayton was having to guard everybody’s four man and we were playing spread, taking a lot of 3s” Oats said. “I told our guys before that game, `We need to take 50 3s so `put them up. We ain’t gonna make them all but if you’re open, we ain’t passing up one shot all day. If you’re open put it up.’ We ended going 15 for 30 and that was a big win for the Buffalo program.”

Things are different for Oats now. Hired away from Buffalo in 2019, he’s won 68.1% of his games over four-plus seasons at Alabama, widely regarded as one of the college game’s top coaches.

“At Buffalo, it was almost like you’re playing with house money,” Oats said. “Nobody expected us to win. There’s wasn’t a whole lot of pressure on our guys.

“Here, I think people expect us to be in this game, to have a shot to win. It’s a little different. There’s a little more pressure on us here than there was playing at Buffalo but styles aren’t that much different. We’re going to shoot a lot of 3s. I haven’t told our guys we had to get 50 up but I wouldn’t mind getting 50 up.”

Easy handshake

When the Basketball Hall of Fame went shopping for opponents to face Arizona in the Jerry Colangelo Hall of Fame Series on Phoenix turf that would inevitably favor the Wildcats, Alabama coach Nate Oats listened.

Then the Wildcats sealed the deal by agreeing to play Alabama in Birmingham, Ala., next season, a comparably semi-neutral site.

“We want to play the best teams in the country and Arizona has been one of the best teams in the country, shoot, since Tommy took over,” Oats said. “He’s done an unbelievable job. So they (Hall of Fame officials) threw it out there. We also need quality teams to play us in Birmingham. So that was the agreement we made.”

Assistant scouts

Not only did Arizona guard Jaden Bradley play for Alabama last season, but the Wildcats also have two players who faced the Crimson Tide last season.

Guard Caleb Love had 34 points, nine rebounds, four assists and four turnovers for North Carolina in its four-overtime 103-101 loss to Alabama early last season, while forward Keshad Johnson had eight points and six rebounds in the Aztecs’ 71-64 win over Alabama in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

But the three of them won’t be meeting with UA coach Tommy Lloyd or game scout Riccardo Fois to discuss Wednesday’s game. Not formally, at least.

“We haven’t gotten them in a room together, shined the light on them and asked them to tell us the secrets to victory,” Lloyd said. “Nothing like that. We have coaches that do that stuff. Our players are always engaged in every decision we make. But nothing crazy.”

Numbers game

1: Alabama’s Kenpom ranking in adjusted offensive efficiency (124.3 points per 100 possessions)

3: Straight nonconference opponents (Purdue, Creighton and Arizona) in the Top 10 that Alabama is facing in a row for the first time in school history.

6: Arizona’s Kenpom ranking in adjusted offensive efficiency (120.5 points per 100 possessions).

91.1: Alabama’s average points per game.

92.9: Arizona’s average points per game.

— Bruce Pascoe