Alabama's bounty of players

Good morning! Before we get to the men’s college hoops hoops news from Wednesday, wanted to give a special shout to UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma, who became the all-time wins leader in college basketball last night. Getting to 1,217 games — let alone winning that many games — is something else.

On to the news.

1. Bama drops 100 on Illinois without a Mark Sears bucket

Mark Sears didn’t score a single point and No. 8 Alabama still rolled to beat Illinois 100-87 in Birmingham on Wednesday. Let me say that again — the Tide won without a single point from its preseason All-American. Alabama is deep and elite offensively. And Chris Youngblood isn’t even back yet.

"That was a big win — Illinois is a good team, they're talented and have multiple guys who are going to end up playing in the NBA,” coach Nate Oats said. “I thought our guys did a much better job defensively, we needed to clean a few things up going into tonight, but we played hard all game and had a great group in there defensively at the end to close it out… A lot of positives to take away from tonight but there is still plenty of things for us to improve upon."

While it may not have been Sears’ night, it sure was Grant Nelson’s. He scored a game-high 23 points with eight rebounds and dominated the first half when he scored 19 of his 23. Oats made a lineup change this game as well, tabbing the freshman guard Labaron Philon to start in place of sophomore forward Jarin Stevenson.

Philon continued his early-season success, scoring 16 points with seven rebounds and eight assists. Aden Holloway had his coming out party with 18 points and three triples. Alabama’s other guard Latrell Wrightsell Jr. scored 16 points. Those three filled the void left by a scoreless Sears.

“Mark realized other guys were playing well and told coach Oats to sub him out,” Nelson said on After Dark. “It just shows his leadership to let those young guys come in and hoop. That was all him.”

Next up for Alabama (4-1)? A big game vs. Houston on Nov. 26. And it doesn’t get any easier from there. Alabama plays four ranked opponents in the next four games.

As for Illinois, this was their first real test of the season after three buy games. Freshman phenom Will Riley led the way with 18 points, and four others joined him in double-figure scoring including Kylan Boswell (17 points), Kasparas Jakucionis (16 points), Tomislav Ivicic (14 points) and Ben Humrichous (11 points).

The Fighting Illini (3-1) looked the part of a top-25 team offensively, but still have things to work out on the defensive end, according to the After Dark crew. You can watch the full breakdown below.

2. It might be a long season at Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech struggled last week against Winthrop. It lost by 22 to Penn State. And Wednesday was the latest confirmation that the Hokies might end up at the bottom of the ACC.

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