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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — While becoming the first college basketball team to beat five ranked nonconference opponents in the past 30 years, the Arizona Wildcats have done a pretty good job squashing bugs.

Can’t manage more than five 3-point attempts against Florida, nor get enough from big men Motiejus Krivas and Tobe Awaka to make up for it? Introduce freshman power forward Koa Peat, who sliced his way inside and to the line against the Gators to collect 30 points, seven rebounds and five assists in his college debut.

Struggling with UCLA on a night when Peat is mired in foul trouble or at the 3-point arc against UConn? Just let Jaden Bradley take the ball to the basket and make something happen in the final minutes.

Want to turn a solid all-around team effort into a homecourt blowout against Auburn, or prove you aren’t that shy behind the 3-point arc against bomb-happy Alabama? Then sprinkle in some of Brayden Burries’ scoring and change the narrative.

After Alabama took a 41-39 halftime lead Saturday at Legacy Arena in the latest of Arizona men's basketball's national head-turners, a 96-75 win over the 12th-ranked Crimson Tide, Burries scored 20 of his 28 points in the second half. That included 15 points in a row and all four second-half 3s he tried.

"We didn't say anything crazy at halftime," UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. "It was just 'Hey, let's see if we can come out and land the first punch and see what happens.' Fortunately, we landed a few haymakers and made some defensive plays and obviously Brayden got in his own little flow, and it was pretty special."

In all, Arizona hit 10 of 26 3s, matching up with the 12 of 32 3s that Alabama tried, yet the Wildcats also stayed true to their usual philosophy of being restrained behind the arc.

Taking the fourth-fewest 3s as a percentage of overall field goals (26.9) out of 365 Division I teams, largely because their dominant big men make for efficient scoring inside, the Wildcats actually took only 31% of their shots from beyond the arc against Alabama.

The trick was that they just took a lot of shots, period. ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV outrebounded Alabama 52-32 overall and scored 15 second-chance points on 22 offensive rebounds. UA also had 11 fewer turnovers, just four to Alabama’s 15, which led to 22 Wildcat points.

All that allowed Arizona to take 84 shots, compared with 56 for Alabama, while the Wildcats took an extra two free throws, too. 

All that math was hard for Alabama coach Nate Oats to digest.

“I mean, it's impossible. I shouldn't say impossible. It's nearly impossible to win a game when your opponent gets 28 more field-goal attempts than you,� Oats said. “We outshot them from the field (44.6% to 42.9%) and from the free-throw line (72.2% to 70.0%) … so you can't win games, giving your opponent 28 more field goal attempts.�

Of course, outmuscling teams on the glass is something the Wildcats have been doing all season.

They are averaging 12.0 rebounds more than their opponents and the pace-adjusted stats are even more intimidating: Arizona ranks eighth nationally in offensive rebounding percentage (41.4) while backup big man Awaka is now first nationally in both offensive (25.0) and defensive (32.7) rebounding percentage.

In other words, if the shot doesn’t go in on either end of the court, there’s a pretty good chance the Wildcats are pulling the ball down. Not surprisingly, against a slightly less beefy Alabama interior, doing so again was part of Arizona’s game plan.

The Wildcats wound up with two players grabbing 14 or more rebounds for the first time in at least 30 seasons (that stat wasn't recorded further back than that). Krivas had 14 points and 14 rebounds while Awaka added another 15 rebounds to go with seven points.

“We really wanted to come out and put it to them on the glass,� Lloyd said. “I feel we have an advantage there on most nights.�

But on Saturday, against an opponent that runs the eighth-fastest tempo in the country, the Wildcats also needed to sustain it.

Lloyd tried to prepare them for that, and maybe it helped that the Wildcats had an entire week to prepare since beating Auburn on Dec. 6, and no travel since returning from Connecticut in the early morning hours of Nov. 20.

“The theme for the week for us was early energy, early effort, because against Alabama, you have to start your possessions like that. You can’t ease into anything,� Lloyd said. “Then the word we really hammered in on was endurance. You have to have competitive endurance against a team like that because they just keep coming at you, coming at you, coming at you.�

Freshman wing Ivan Kharchenkov described that philosophy playing out, as the Wildcats took a two-point halftime deficit into a 20-point lead midway through the second half, then kept comfortable leads the rest of the way.

"We were talking about endurance all week long," Kharchenkov said. "We just tried to play all 40 minutes with a lot of energy. I think we hit another 10% more in the second half, and I think that was the advantage for us."

All that was probably enough for the Wildcats to win it, and then Burries almost singlehandedly turned the game into a shocker. Arizona trailed 43-39 early in the second half before rattling off 10 straight points to take a 49-43 lead with 16:26 left.

During that run, they received a 3 from Burries, a steal and layup from Kharchenkov and a steal and 3-pointer from Jaden Bradley.

"We came out, didn't have a good start, and then it just progressed," Oats said. "We got worse."

Just over two minutes after UA's 10-0 run, Burries fueled an 11-0 run that changed the nature of the game. The freshman shooting guard had seven points while also stealing the ball and feeding an assist to Awaka off the steal during the run, after which UA held a 67-49 lead with 11:22 to go.

The Wildcats led by no fewer than 15 points the rest of the way, and often by more than 20, while "U of A" chants began to break out in the corner of the arena behind their bench.

Burries was actually only 1 for 6 from 3 in the first half before hitting all four 3s he took in the second half.

"The first half I was confused on why they were playing off, like short close outs," Burries said, saying teammates encouraged him at halftime. "Jaden Bradley was coming up to me saying, like, `Yo, we gonna need you. Keep shooting.’ They believe in me. So that's all I needed to hear."