In the air between Fayetteville and Tuscaloosa

By Chris Stewart

As you would expect, it's an awfully quiet flight home after a disappointing overtime loss at Arkansas for the Alabama men's basketball team. Mark Gottfried's squad made several key plays to stay in the game, and ultimately force overtime, but unfortunately wound up on the short end of a 71-67 score.

This team turned it up a notch (maybe two or three) defensively against the Razorbacks. If they can keep from being too deflated by their third loss in four games, I believe they have a great chance at winning their next couple of contests this week - Wednesday at Georgia, then Saturday at home against Mississippi State.

I thought Brandon Hollinger's calming presence at the point was a major difference in allowing the Crimson Tide to keep Arkansas in reach, and eventually tie the game for the first time on Mykal Riley's trey with under :20 to play in regulation. It was also great to see the Pine Bluff native (Riley) get the block of Charles Thomas' shot to force OT. He played well down the stretch against his home state team.

Now Alabama heads to Athens where they will face a team with veteran guards and a physical, even awkward, type of front line. Its too early to mathematically call that Wednesday night game a "must-win", but emotionally, it might be just that.

Roll Tide...... from 26,000 feet.

Chris Stewart is the pre and post game host for the Crimson Tide Sports Network's coverage of Alabama Football. In addition, he hosts a talk show each weekday morning from 7 until 9 on Tuscaloosa's Sports Radio 1420, The Tusk. Stewart is also the radio play-by-play announcer for University of Alabama men's basketball.   Bama Fever is a company devoted to providing University of Alabama Crimson Tide merchandise. We have stores in Birmingham, Tuscaloosa  and Huntsville and have now created an online catalog for Crimson Tide fans all over the world searching for that hard to find merchandise. We carry over 7,000 items in our stores and have posted many of these items right here in our online catalog.

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Read all of Chris's Game Recaps