It wasn’t just raining 3s for Alabama on Thursday — it was pouring 3s.
Alabama, the No. 2 in the East Region, advanced to the Elite Eight with an emphatic 113-88 victory over the No. 6 seed BYU. The three-point line was both the soup of the day and the main course for Alabama as they ended up shattering an all-time NCAA Tournament record with a preposterous 25 made triples.
Mark Sears led the charge for the Crimson Tide, splashing an unbelievable 10 three-pointers en route to a game-high 34 points.
Alabama also had four other players sink multiple three-pointers on the evening — Aden Holloway (six), Chris Youngblood (five), Aiden Sherrell (two), and Labaron Philon (two). They ended up making nearly half of their total three-point attempts (25/51), and Sears alone made more three-pointers than the entire BYU team did (six).
The long-range shooting clinic by Alabama smashed the previous NCAA Tournament single-game record of 21 threes (set by Paul Westhead’s run-and-gun Loyola Marymount team back in 1990 against Michigan). Any time you break a 35-year record, you know that you have done something pretty special.
Alabama is now set to play in the Elite Eight against the winner of Thursday’s game between No. 1 seed Duke and No. 4 seed Arizona. The Crimson Tide notably hired a veteran NBA assistant over the offseason to join head coach Nate Oats’ staff, and they sure looked like an NBA team on Thursday against BYU with that unthinkable display of three-point shooting.
