NEWARK, N.J. – The Alabama men’s basketball season came to an end Saturday night with an 85-65 defeat to No. 1 seed Duke in the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight. With the loss, the Crimson Tide closes its 2024-25 season with a final record of 28-9.

Labaron Philon led the Crimson Tide with 16 points to go along with five rebounds and three assists. Grant Nelson collected 10 points and a team-leading seven rebounds, while Chris Youngblood also added 10 points in the loss.

Duke (35-3) was led by Kon Knueppel’s 21 points and five assists while Cooper Flagg collected 16 points and nine boards to lead the Blue Devils to its first Final Four in 11 years.

Head Coach Nate Oats Postgame Comments

“Obviously a tough night for us. Duke had a big part to do with that. They’re a great team. They’ve got great players. Coaching staff did a good job getting them ready. Only one team is going to end up cutting the nets down in San Antonio. It won’t be us this year. I told our guys that we’ve raised this program to a level where the standard is really high. Ninety-nine percent of college basketball players would trade places with these guys with the year we had, but we’re disappointed. We had bigger goals, and it’s disappointing to go out like we went out. But I thought our guys stayed together. They kept playing hard. Duke was good. We didn’t do a good job attacking their switching on defense. We’ve got to figure out ways to win when we don’t shoot it well. The offensive rebounding was a big one we kind of said we need to be elite at, get to the free-throw line. We got to the free-throw line a fair amount, but it was not enough. We played two nights ago and it’s tough within 48 hours from playing as well as we did to playing as poorly as we did. That’s how the NCAA Tournament works in a one-game elimination tournament. You play poorly and you get sent home, and that’s what happened. Duke is as good a team as we’ve seen all year. We’ve got some really good teams in the SEC, and they’re at that level, and it wasn’t meant to be for us tonight.”

Team Stats

• Alabama secured back-to-back Elite Eight appearances for the first time in school history
• Duke owned a 41-30 edge on the boards which marked just the seventh time on the year Alabama lost the rebounding battle (4-3 in those contests)
• It was the second time this season the Tide was held under 70 points this season, failing to 0-2 in those contests (lost to Ole Miss 74-64)
• The Tide finished the contest just 9-of-20 on layups and was outscored 40-28 inside the paint

First Half 

• Duke jumped on Alabama with an early 12-3 run to take a 15-5 lead into the first media timeout
• The Crimson Tide trimmed the lead to four points, 23-19, but the Blue Devils would respond with seven consecutive points to push their lead to 11 points
• Duke would go on to lead by as many as 13 points before Alabama cut it to nine, 46-37, at intermission    
• The Blue Devils owned a 24-16 edge in points in the paint and outrebounded the Tide 18-17
• UA shot 40 percent (14-of-35) from the field, 26 percent (5-of-19) from deep while Duke was 56 percent from the floor (18-of-32) and from beyond the arc (5-of-9)

Second Half 

• With Duke leading by 13, 63-50, Alabama made its run and scored eight of the next 10 points to trim the lead to 65-58 with 8:03 remaining
• However, Duke took control of the contest by scoring 13 consecutive points over the next five-plus minutes to stretch its lead to 78-58 with 2:52 remaining
• The Tide was outrebounded 23-13 over the final 20 minutes