For much of the game, it was white-knuckle and dry mouth time for the Alabama faithful.

The Crimson Tide were especially cold shooting from beyond the arc, and the patented bench scoring had not materialized. Then the SEC champs kicked it into gear fueled by Herb Jones, Juwan Gary and Jahvon Quinerly. Alabama turned a nail-biter into a breeze thanks to a second-half spurt that keyed a 13-2 as they pulled away from Iona in the NCAA Tournament for a 68-55 victory.

Jones paced the Tide with 20 points, while Quinerly chipped in 11 off the bench. Alabama moves on to play the winner of UConn-Maryland, which was set for later Saturday night.

In their last games on the floor, Alabama earned an 80-79 win over LSU on Sunday, while Iona got a 60-51 win against Fairfield on Saturday.

The sluggish outing spilled into the second half when Alabama opened 2-for-8 shooting and 0-for-3 from 3-point range. Alabama was only 3-for-14 from 3 with 10:00 left in the second half. Super sub Quinerly, who was the SEC Tournament MVP, had just 5 points by halfway through the second half.

But it was a rusty game all around. John Petty, who is a 76 percent foul shooter, was 3-for-8 to start the game.

The Tide, somewhat of an upstart team compared to Iona’s coach, Rick Pitino, who has now taken 5 programs to the Big Dance, began to pull away with about 8 minutes to play when they went on a 7-0 run in just a minute and 23 seconds. That matched Alabama’s largest lead to that point of the game — 8 points.

It was punctuated by this dunk from Jones.

Before the run started, Alex Reese made a 3 to snap a drought where the Tide had missed 9 attempts in a row from downtown.

After an Iona timeout and a media timeout, Alabama poured it on some more, and ultimately built the spurt to a 11-0 run. Alabama ultimately withstood the charge from Iona, which came strong to end the first half.