Alabama Basketball Achieves History with 16th SEC Win, But There's Still a Lot of Work to Do
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — It seems like every game here recently, Alabama basketball is making program history.
On Saturday, the Crimson Tide overcame a 14-point first-half deficit at Georgia and rallied to win 89-79. Despite being nearly doubled up by a margin of 29-15 with 8:03 left in the first half, Alabama was able to execute a 9-2 run and then later close out the half with a 6-0 run to pull within six points at the break.
A 15-2 run to start the second half put 45-38 — a lead that Alabama never looked back from.
But what about the historic aspect?
Saturday's win for Alabama was its 16th SEC victory of 2020-2021, tying the program record for most conference victories in a single season. Along with clinching the regular-season conference title on Feb. 27 at Mississippi State, the team is now slated as a No. 1 seed heading into this week's SEC Tournament in Nashville.
Second-year Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats said that he is proud of his team for its accomplishments this season but there is still work to be done.
"To go 16-2 — what are we, tied for the best record in SEC history at Alabama — shows a lot about what this team is made of," Oats said. "Proud of our guys, but we’ve got to get back to playing better. More like the second half than the first half going into Nashville.”
Alabama will now take on the winner of the Nos. 8 and 9 seeds of the tournament in Kentucky and Mississippi State. The Crimson Tide was able to sweep both home-and-home series against the Wildcats and the Bulldogs during the regular season. While that is a good sign that Alabama can defeat both teams, beating a team twice in a season is already a difficult task — and beating them three times even more so.
It should be noted that Kentucky is the team that has beaten Alabama in the SEC Tournament each year for the last four seasons prior to 2020 (which was canceled due to COVID-19).
While Alabama was able to win six of its last seven SEC games, the team still hasn't played its best basketball since January, when it was routinely defeating opponents by large margins. The Crimson Tide's defense has remained fairly consistent outside of outliers like Arkansas and Mississippi State, but it's with its offense where the most concerns lie.
That being said, the second half of Saturday's game at Georgia seemed promising. Alabama was able to score 59 points in the last 20 minutes, finishing the game shooting 49 percent from the floor and 45 percent from beyond the arc.
Oats hopes that the second half at Georgia will inspire confidence and give the Crimson Tide momentum heading into Friday's game in Bridgestone Arena.
"I hope this second-half offense and defense carries right over to a full game in Nashville," Oats said. "That's what I told our team. We looked like we feel we can play in the second half. The ball was moving around, we were making shots — we still had too many turnovers in the second half. We had 11 in each half but we were making shots. I think you make shots at a higher clip when you're just locked in to the right stuff — when you're worried about guarding and playing the right way, I think the offense just takes care of itself."
