Labaron Philon Jr. finished with 29 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, and No. 4 seed Alabama rallied from an early double-digit deficit to beat 13th-seeded Hofstra 90-70 in a first-round game in the Midwest Region of the NCAA Tournament on Friday. The Crimson Tide (24-9) advanced to a second-round matchup against fifth-seeded Texas Tech (23-10), a 20-point winner over 12th-seeded Akron in the earlier first-round game at Benchmark International Arena.
Alabama ended the opening half on a 19-7 run to wipe out a 10-point deficit, then built its own lead to 13 before Hofstra (24-11) mounted one last push for a possible upset.
“We focused on just getting stops and pushing our pace. You know they were trying to slow the game down. You could see that in the second half,” Philon said. “Our pace kind of broke them down a little bit and we just started running.”
Freshman Preston Edmead had 24 points for the Pride, and his 3-point basket pulled the Pride within 67-62 with just over seven minutes remaining. Victory Onuetu's dunk trimmed Alabama's lead to 69-64 and ignited much of a crowd of 17,769 that threw its support behind the underdogs.
Philon was simply too much down the stretch, though, delivering a layup and a long 3-pointer during a surge that enabled Alabama to rebuild the lead to double digits. Taylor Bol Bowen put an exclamation point on the Crimson Tide response with two dunks and a 3-pointer as the lead ballooned to 20.
“Hofstra is a team that's been on a big winning streak,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said. “They came in expecting to win and you could tell that. I think they got frustrated late.”
Alabama played without star guard Aden Holloway, who was suspended indefinitely following an arrest on a felony drug charge. In the absence of the team's second-leading scorer, Aiden Sherrell, Latrell Wrightsell Jr and Amari Allen stepped up in support of Philon, who had 21 points after halftime.
Hofstra was in the tournament for the first time since 2001, the year after NBA champion and current coach Speedy Claxton helped the school located in Hempstead, New York land a spot in March Madness. The Pride also earned a berth in 2020, but that year's NCAA Tournament was canceled because of the pandemic.
“Proud of my guys' effort,” Claxton said. “It's kind of tough to win a game when you give up 17 offensive rebounds. For a team like us in a tournament like this, we pretty much have to play perfect basketball, and we didn't do that.”
Sherrell had 15 points and 15 rebounds. Wrightsell and Allen each added 11 points.
“I try to get guys involved. I ended up with like seven assists,” Philon said. “I was mainly focused on getting the ball out of my hands when I needed to and getting it back if I needed to.”
Cruz Davis scored 14 points and German Plotnikov had 11 for Hofstra.
Alabama rolled despite missing 13 of its first 16 3-points attempts and going 12 of 36 beyond the arc overall. Philon scored 21 of his 29 in the second half. He finished 10 of 18 from the field, including 3 of 7 on 3-pointers. Hofstra fell to 0-5 all-time in the NCAA Tournament. The Pride also lost in the first round in 1976, 1977, 2000 and 2001.
