Alabama Had To Play 3-On-5 After Its Entire Bench Was Ejected During A Fight

The Alabama Crimson Tide took a huge loss on the football field on Saturday, but its men’s basketball team suffered a much crueler, much rarer fate in Brooklyn against Minnesota.

It was a testy tournament game that featured a few scuffles throughout the night, including a fight where the Tide’s reserve players left the bench area. That resulted in every Alabama bench player getting ejected, which meant the Tide would only have its five on-court players available for the rest of the game.

This is what Alabama’s bench looked like less than halfway through the second half.

https://twitter.com/RobDauster/status/934567954129276928

It got worse for the Tide, though. Dazon Ingram had four fouls on him, and he soon picked up a fifth that got him disqualified for the rest of the game. In other words, Alabama was down to just four players.

But wait, it somehow managed to get even worse when one of those four players went down with an injury and had to leave the game.

That’s right. A 5-on-3, 2-man advantage. On a basketball court.

Stadium Sports, which broadcasted the game on Facebook, had a nice recap of the scuffles that got us to 5-on-3 magic.

If you happened to catch the game while it was airing live, you got to see a bunch of laughing emojis and hearts floating by on the screen as three Crimson Tide tried to defend five Gophers on the court.

But the most incredible part was the way the three players on the floor for Alabama, led by Colin Sexton, hung around against the Gophers (who were clearly not playing at 100 percent).

Of course, there were plenty of jokes about it, but Alabama managed to make the most of their incredible situation. It’s tough to win when you have just three players on the basketball court. Unless you’re in the BIG3, but the Tide at one point pulled to within three of the Gophers in one of the most incredible efforts in basketball history.

The Tide were actually out-scoring the Gophers with three players! And Minnesota clearly looked flummoxed by playing 5-on-3, even though they had the overwhelming advantage. They mostly just seemed relieved to escape with the 89-84 win despite an incredible effort from Sexton, who finished with 40 points on the night.

Gophers coach Richard Pitino summed up his team’s struggle against the three-man tide after the game.

The win is a big one for Minnesota, but no one will be talking about them after the improbable situation Bama put itself in on Saturday.