NCAA Tournament - Mark Sears’ big night against Clemson propels Alabama to its first Final Four

Jason Fitz and Danny Green discuss the Crimson Tide's victory over the Tigers, highlighting Mark Sears' standout performance and Clemson's struggles at the free-throw line.

Video Transcript

JASON FITZ: Alabama's gone from Big Shot Bob to Sweet Shot Sears. And now, for the first time in program history, they're headed. They're rolling into the Final Four. Danny Green, Jason Fitz, Yahoo Sports. I'll stop being cheesy now at this point. Danny, let's give all the flowers right out of the gate to Mark Sears who is absolutely incredible. And in the second half, wildly hot from 3. It just felt like everything he threw up was going in.

DANNY GREEN: Yeah. They shot extremely well from 3. I said, I give a lot of credit to Clemson for staying close for being out shot from 3, out shot from the field, out rebounded, and not making their free throws, and they still only lost by 7. But if they made their free throws, this would have been a game. But not only him shooting 714 from 3. But the rest of their team, they shot 16 from 36 from 3, 44%. I think even before that, it was even higher.

So they shot extremely well from the perimeter. And I wish Grant Nelson had a game like he had tonight against Mark Sears. We might have had a chance. But you know, Clemson did a good job of going attacking him and kind of keeping him quiet on the offensive end.

JASON FITZ: I think it's interesting because I asked you the other night, what do you do when you're missing everything? And early on in the game, Alabama was missing everything, but they shot their way through it. And to their credit in the second half, I think a theme we saw in both of the games over the course of the day was that you've got teams in the second half that came out and sort of righted some of the wrongs. Alabama came out in the second half just on fire, and they went from not being able to hit anything to being able to hit everything.

It speaks to what you talked about where sometimes you just got to know that line right and remaining consistent in your approach and just continuing to throw up the shots.

DANNY GREEN: Well, tonight's games where the tale of halves, right? The first halves look really good, especially for that first game it was tight with uConn, they just exploded. Alabama got extremely hot, hit a bunch of 3's. It was a moment they were kind of going back to back a little bit, but then they opened it up, went up 10. And from there, they just never looked back. And Clemson said they fought, they kept crawling, and fighting and clawing back. They just couldn't make the free throws to get them over the edge. They made the stops they needed to make.

They just couldn't execute the way they needed to in order to be in the game.

JASON FITZ: But so far, in the process of covering the tournament for Yahoo, I feel like we've been screaming, make your free throws over and over. Now, it's one thing for me. 5' 9", little guy, sitting in front of a microphone to sing it, screaming, but you played, man. And so like when you see somebody and you see that basic tenant, like free throws feel like they should be the easiest thing in the world. And in this moment, you got to believe that late in the game, particularly, when it was a 5, 6-point game, those free throws misses loomed large for Clemson.

DANNY GREEN: Two in a row. They were down five, missed two in a row. They missed eight for the game. They only lost by seven. So imagine, even if you hit half of those, it's a closer game where team might make mistakes, they might turn it over, it puts you in the game. But to miss eight free throws, go eight for 16. That's 50%. That's pretty bad. 50% in our game is really bad as a free throw shooter. As a team, you can't do that in this tournament.

JASON FITZ: It's amazing to me to think about the success that we associate with Alabama athletics and to realize that this is the first time that they're making a trip to the Final Four. It speaks to the investment that the program has made in coaching facilities and recruiting, all of these things, it speaks to the investment the SEC has made. And now, all of a sudden Alabama gets the opportunity to return to a stadium where they've played for a national championship in football. But this time, they'll be doing it on the hard court, and it will be can't miss.