Nate Oats: "We're Just Trying to Play Good Basketball"
At this point, it seems like there's no stopping this Alabama basketball team.
On Wednesday night, the Crimson Tide handled the Florida Gators with ease, winning the game in convincing 97-69 fashion. Brandon Miller recorded 24 points and nine rebounds, Mark Sears 19 points and two rebounds and Charles Bediako an impressive four blocks.
Aside from the first five minutes of the second half, Alabama was blistering Florida. Even when the Gators outscored the Crimson Tide 17-7 to open the second half, it didn't seem for even a second that Alabama was going to ever fall behind.
So far this season, Alabama has bested its SEC opponents by an average of just over 23 points per game. Additionally, the Crimson Tide has allowed none of its conference opponents to score more than 69 points.
The win over Florida propelled Alabama up to No. 2 in KenPom – the highest ranking in the analytics service in program history — and gave the Crimson Tide an 11-0 start in SEC play. The perfect start marks the best in school history since the Rocket 8 did so in the 1955-56 season.
"It's great," Oats said after the game. "We've had a lot of really good teams here. I don't even know who was in the SEC back in '55-'56 but it's a good league now. Look, we're just trying to play good basketball. I think we played pretty well tonight. We got a really tough two-game stretch in front of us so it's nice to make some history around here."
That 1955-56 team ultimately finished with a perfect 14-0 record in SEC play and an overall record of 21-3. That 21-3 record is the exact same record that the Crimson Tide currently boasts this season with still seven games left to play in the regular season.
There's still a long way to go for this Alabama team, and that next step starts this weekend at Auburn. The Tigers have now lost four of their last five games, but make no mistake: Auburn is a tough team, and even more so when they're playing inside Neville Arena.
"It's become a top-25 game," Oats said of the game against Auburn. "[...] They're one of the best teams in this league and [head coach Bruce Pearl] lost a lot from last year. They'll 100 percent be ready for us, we all know that.
"One thing I know for sure is they're going to play as hard as we've seen a team play all year."
Next Wednesday presents another tough road test at No. 6 Tennessee. The Volunteers still look like one of the best teams in the conference despite their buzzer-beater loss at Vanderbilt in their midweek game.
It's no easy task, but it's tough matchups like those that this Crimson Tide team has gotten used to. In order for the team to eclipse its program high of 14-0 in SEC play, it's going to have to go through the Tigers and the Volunteers before returning home and facing the Georgia Bulldogs.
Alabama would then have to win on the road at South Carolina to reach 15-0.
"If we could get to 14-0 that'd be great," Oats said. "I guess that's the next mark, but it's not going to be easy with these next two road games."
History is something that is being actively made with each game that the Crimson Tide plays this season. However, as Oats stated, the team is hardly focused on that. Instead, it's focusing on what got them to this level of success in the first place: simply playing good basketball.
And if this team keeps downing opponents like it did on Wednesday night, then there's still a lot of that left to be played.
