NEWARK, N.J. — The centerpiece of the best offense in college basketball stands just 6-foot-1. He isn’t a particularly explosive athlete, either. He was a three-star recruit out of Hargrave Military Academy and began his college career at the mid-major level (Ohio University). But for the past few seasons, Mark Sears has been among the nation’s most unstoppable forces.
The fifth-year guard is averaging 18.6 points, 5.0 assists and 3.0 rebounds in his third season at Alabama. A week ago, he became the first consensus first-team All-American in program history. With Sears running the show, the Tide made their first-ever appearance in the Final Four last year and are now back in the Sweet Sixteen, where they will meet sixth-seeded BYU on Thursday at the Prudential Center.
Sears is a semifinalist for the Naismith Trophy and a finalist for the Bob Cousy Award, which is given to the country’s top point guard. He has become the perfect conductor of Alabama’s fast-paced, NBA-like system. The team has ranked first in points per game in back-to-back seasons.
Sears’ dominance begs the obvious question, how is an undersized guard without jaw-dropping athleticism able to be so effective? Alabama senior Clifford Omoruyi, a 6-foot-11 center, admits he was wondering that very thing when he first encountered Sears at an NBA pre-draft workout in 2024. “At first if you look at him, just based on his physique, I didn’t think this guy could hoop,” Omoruyi tells Hoops HQ. “But once I started to see him going, the energy, the speed he goes at…” Omoruyi discovered right away that Sears was the real deal.
It starts with his shooting. Sears has developed into an elite perimeter shooter during his college career. The lefty connected on 43.6 percent of his 5.9 three-point attempts per game last season, which ranked sixth in Division I. That efficiency has dipped considerably this year to 32.9 percent, but Sears has already proven to be a dangerous enough threat from behind the arc to transform how opposing teams defend him. In fact, his struggles this season can be largely attributed to how defenses have keyed in on him, forcing him to take tougher shots. Sears has still hit at least two three-pointers in 21 of Alabama’s 35 games. “That hasn’t been a concern,” Sears said of the decline in his efficiency. “I’m going to just keep being me. I put in the work and I’m going to keep shooting, and I know my teammates are going to do a great job of finding me when I’m open.”
Coaches and teammates have the utmost trust in Sears, who regularly launches threes from well beyond the arc. When Aden Holloway, a 6-foot-1 sophomore guard, first arrived in Tuscaloosa after transferring from Auburn, he was amazed at Sears’ shooting ability. The two have engaged in three-point competitions throughout the season. “I’ll be honest, he was killing me when we first started,” Holloway tells Hoops HQ. “He was definitely killing me. I kind of evened it out a little bit, but I was getting so mad to the point where I had to come back on my own to shoot some more.”
On top of his shooting, Sears is a “very powerful guard,” as Alabama assistant coach Ryan Pannone puts it, with outstanding handles. He excels at using his body and strength to create separation and has figured out how to attack defenses at the correct angles, which is a big point of emphasis from the staff. “We spend a ton of time in our player development and everything that we do on ‘hip attacks,’” Pannone tells Hoops HQ. “Every time we drive, we want to attack the defender’s hip. We want to get our feet downhill. We want to put pressure on the defense and we want to have confrontational drives, meaning getting our shoulder into them.” By successfully attacking hips, Sears draws more fouls than most guards in DI. He has attempted 232 free throws this season, tied for 15th nationally, and knocked down 84.9 percent of them.
“Getting into the defender, not going left to right but going kind of right through, he’s really good at that,” adds Alabama assistant coach Brian Adams. “Pannone does a great job of teaching it, as far as how your feet are pointing and what direction you’re going and not going wide, trying to go narrow. You teach it, but not everybody can just do it. [Sears] does some of that stuff naturally.”
Alabama’s offense only works if the guards are applying constant pressure to the rim. Since joining the Tide in 2022, Sears has gotten significantly better at playing north-south as opposed to east-west. As BYU’s Trey Stewart, a 6-foot-2 senior guard, tells Hoops HQ, Sears is one of those players “who just gets where they want to go” regardless of what defenses do. “His ability to get downhill is just phenomenal,” Stewart adds. “People know he’s a left-hand dominant guard, but he’s still getting downhill.”
Sears is adept at changing pace, remaining low to the ground and in complete control at all times. “You ever heard the term ‘lowest man wins’?” Alabama senior Chris Youngblood, a 6-foot-4 guard, says. “If you’re strong, you’re fast, you’re low, you change pace and you’re aggressive, it’s kind of hard to stop that. Even though they know he’s going left, you can’t really do much about it.”
After lulling defenders to sleep, Sears will accelerate to the paint and then stop on a dime. He displays great “paint patience,” as Alabama senior Grant Nelson, a 6-foot-11 senior forward, says. Sears has an uncanny ability to freeze for a moment and survey all of his options, while also throwing off the timing of shot blockers in front of the rim. “He’s got that slow step where he’ll stand on one foot for three seconds before he makes a read,” Nelson tells Hoops HQ. “That makes it tough on bigs to know what he’s doing, whether he’s going to shoot it or kick it out for three or whatever.”
Alabama doesn’t run nearly as many sets as other teams. Coach Nate Oats places a lot of trust in his guards, especially Sears, to break down opposing defenses and then make the right reads, whether it’s taking a shot, spraying the ball out for a three or lobbing it up to one of the big men. Sears has evolved tremendously as a passer under Oats. He is averaging a career-high 5.0 assists per game and had the third highest assist rate (28.5) in the SEC during conference play, according to KenPom. “Whenever he has the ball, I’m always ready to shoot,” sophomore Jarin Stevenson, a 6-foot-11 forward, tells Hoops HQ. “The ball can come whenever.”
As their March Madness run continues, the Tide will face another offensive juggernaut in BYU, which ranks 26th in the country in points per game. It is likely to be the type of high-scoring, uptempo affair that Sears relishes. While he did not shoot the ball well in the first two rounds of the Tournament, his mindset hasn’t wavered. After all, every game could be his last at the college level.
There are legitimate questions about Sears’ NBA potential given his size and defensive weaknesses, but he will warrant careful consideration because of his unique skill set. “Coaches don’t really like small guards. That’s a statement that’s said in college and it’s definitely said in the NBA,” Pannone, who previously served as an assistant coach for the New Orleans Pelicans, says. “And something that’s often overlooked and not thought of is, if you’re a smaller guard or smaller at any position and you found a way to be really successful, it means you figured it out. There are plenty of guards that are 6-foot-4 or 6-foot-5 that can’t do what Mark Sears can do.”
