UAB makes History In Loss To Alabama State, First-Ever Defeat by HBCU Team
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - November 12, 2025
A miserable night shooting from outside the 3-point line helped create a historical night at Bartow Arena. And UAB ended up on the wrong side of history.
For the first time since UAB began playing men’s basketball, the Blazers lost a game to a team from the SWAC. UAB entered the evening with 78 consecutive victories over the SWAC. Alabama State ended the streak by jumping out quickly, enduring some second half surges by UAB and holding on to a 77-74 victory over the Blazers despite a career-high 25 points from UAB’s Chance Westry.
“Great win for Alabama State, for all the HBCU’s,” said Alabama head coach Tony Madlock. “Y'all understand that we have to go play these games on the road. And they're never easy, they're never easy what we have to go through. But for us to be an hour and a half down the road and to come down and play the way we played and against one of my mentors, (Andy Kennedy) is one of my guys. I worked for him for four years and been knowing him forever. So it was a great win for our program.”
For UAB, though, it was simply a frustrating night.
“Just playing bad,” Kennedy said after his UAB team fell to 1-2 on the young season. “Can't make a shot, can’t guard. They played through us. Remember I said when we played Vandy, I thought they played through us. Remember I used the analogy of a fight and they threw more punches. Who do you think threw more punches tonight? Us or them. I think they did.”
Shooting the basketball was also a problem for the Blazers, who didn’t make their first 3-pointer until 35.6 seconds left in the game.
“Now, when you go 2-for-20 (on 3s) and one of them was banked in, your margin for error obviously is going to be very, very thin,” Kennedy said. “It's remarkable that we're in the game. We went 4-for-25 against NC State. Again, that's not great, but that's 6-for 45. You go 4-for-25 against NC State, you're going to get beat by 25 like we did. You go 2-for-20 here and banked in one. So it's going to put pressure on the other parts of your game and then our inability to finish through contact and our inability to stop them when we needed to.”
Kennedy also pointed out that missed assignments were an issue, using the defensive lapses against Alabama State’s Micah Simpson as an example. Simpson got too many clean looks during the game and finished with six 3-pointers.
Alabama used an 11-0 run to build a 14-4 lead early in the game and didn’t give up the lead again until the second half. UAB used a 16-3 run, which included six consecutive points from KyeRon Lindsay-Martin to take a 55-47 lead with 12:01 remaining. But the Blazers couldn’t hold the momentum. Alabama State (1-1) managed to build a lead that stretched to nine points with about minute left. However, kept battling to the end, largely thanks to eight points by Westry, including a pair of 3-pointers, in the final 35.6 seconds.
Eventually, Alabama State had a three-point lead with 3.9 seconds remaining and UAB inbounding from underneath their own basket. But the Blazers never got a chance to squeeze off a potential game-tying 3-pointer after Westry’s long inbound pass was intercepted.
“It's called ‘home run’,” Kennedy said. “It’s thing that we practice but he threw it to the wrong guy. He’s supposed to throw it to the center and we're going to split off of it because we needed the three. But we throw to the wrong guy. Crazy to me, crazy.”
It was a bad ending to what was a good night for Westry, who was 10-of-16 from the field, 2-of-5 on 3-pointers and made all three of his free throws. He was one of three double-figure scorers for the Blazers. Lindsey-Martin had 14 points and five rebounds and Ahmad Robinson had 12 points despite missing all five of his 3-point attempts. Jacob Meyer had a difficult night with five points and four turnovers.
UAB needs to turn the page quickly with High Point coming to town on Friday night.