Alabama Basketball Secures Seed for 2026 SEC Tournament

Alabama basketball's 96-84 win Auburn has secured the Crimson Tide the No. 2 seed in the 2026 SEC Tournament.

The bracket and the Crimson Tide's path to the SEC Tournament Championship should be revealed shortly. Regardless, 2-seed Alabama will first play in the quarterfinals against either the 7, 10 or 15-seed on Friday at 6 p.m. CT in Nashville.

Alabama's seed was uncertain coming into Saturday night, as it was either going to be No. 2 or No. 3 pending the result against the Tigers.

Head coach Nate Oats and company own the tiebreaker over Arkansas for the 2-seed due to the 117-115 double-overtime victory over the Razorbacks in Coleman Coliseum on Feb. 18. But Arkansas beat Missouri earlier this afternoon, meaning if Alabama lost to Auburn, it would've been the 3-seed.

Nevertheless, Alabama got the job done. It finished its 2026 SEC slate with the second-best record in conference play.

The SEC Tournament will take place in Nashville from March 11 to March 15. While Alabama's opponent is still unknown, the Crimson Tide recently clinched a double-bye as a guaranteed top-4 seed. This means that UA won't play until the quarterfinal round on Friday, March 13.

After falling to Florida on Feb. 1, the Crimson Tide moved down to the ninth spot in the conference standings. But a switch flipped after that loss, as Alabama won eight straight games before falling to Georgia 98-88 on Tuesday. The Crimson Tide was tied for the No. 2 spot in the standings during the latter part of the streak, but the 71-69 road win over Tennessee on Feb. 28 gave Alabama sole possession of that placement.

So, now that Alabama knows its seed, what is Oats looking to improve on during the SEC Tournament and NCAA Tournament?

"Maybe we're not going to outrebound teams by 20, but we've got to do a better job tightening up the rebounding gap," Oats said on Friday. "Maybe we only lose the rebounding battle by a few. We can't continue to lose it by 17 and 10 like we've just done these last two games, and expect to be able to continue to win at a high level.

"We've got to focus on what it takes to be great on defense and really lock into that on every single possession for 40 minutes. If we do that, we can score the ball as good as any team in the country. We are a better defensive team this year than we were then, but we are not where we would need to be to make a run in the SEC tournament or in the NCAA Tournament."

"We can be an elite perimeter defensive team that makes more defensive plays and can turn people over a little more. We've got to buy into what we've got. If we do that, we've got a chance to make a run."