Does Nate Oats View Potential First SEC Tournament Game as Advantage or Disadvantage?

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama basketball hasn't lost very often this season, and when it has, the Crimson Tide responds in tremendous fashion.

Head coach Nate Oats and company have lost back-to-back games just one time this season (Vanderbilt and Texas). There have been two stretches where UA has lost 2 of 3 subsequent contests, but other than that, Alabama regained firm control after falling to an opponent, including an eight-game win streak from Feb. 4 to Feb. 28.

Alabama's response from losses — and a 13-5 record (23-8 overall) against the conference — has helped it earn the No. 2 seed in the SEC Tournament. The first round tipped off on Wednesday, but the Tide will not be playing until the quarterfinals on Friday against either 7-seed Georgia or 15-seed Ole Miss. The Rebels upset 10-seed Texas on Wednesday night.

Alabama's eight-game win streak ended on the road against Georgia on March 3, and it fell to Texas 92-88 at home on Jan. 10. The Tide rolled over Ole Miss in Oxford 93-74 on Feb. 11, but the Rebels were only down two points at halftime. So, with the loss to Georgia and the eyebrow-raising first half against Ole Miss, does Oats see a rematch with either of these teams as an advantage or disadvantage?

"The fact that we're 0-1 against Texas and 0-1 against Georgia, you can look at it two ways," Oats said during Wednesday's press conference before the Ole Miss-Texas game. "One is, shoot, we lost to both of these teams. Are they a better team than you? They're good teams. There's no doubt that both of those teams have very good rosters, very good coaches that play hard.

"So in one regard, would you like to play a team that you dominated? Well, it's the SEC. We're a 2-seed. You're going to play a seven or 10, most likely. You could end up playing a 15. But most likely you're playing a seven or 10. The 7-seed and the 10-seed in the SEC are both NCAA tournament teams. So you're going to play a good team."

But of course, human nature plays a role in these games. Oats explained that "there's a little bit of an edge" in rematches. Simply put, revenge is a double-edged sword.

"We're not robots," Oats said. "We use a lot of analytics and you can spit out the computer models on everything, and we look at them all. But the fact is, there's still emotion that goes into it. We coach with some emotion, the players play with some emotion, and I would hope that it's an advantage, because there's a little bit more of an edge to you when you've lost to the team."

"I think [the players] understand that if you come out and do what you did the first time, good chance you get the same result," Oats said. "And if we get the same result, we ain't going to be playing tomorrow. So we've got to come out and do something a little different than what we did.

"Coaching staff's got to do a good job of making sure we make adjustments from when we took the loss until now. The players got to realize that some of the adjustment is they just got to execute the game plan better.

"So yes, there's stuff that we as a coaching staff did not do a good job of in both these games, Texas and Georgia — that's if we end up playing with them — and we've got to be better and we will be better."

Alabama's official opponent for the quarterfinal will be determined at the conclusion of the Georgia-Ole Miss contest, which is set to tip off at 6 p.m. CT on SEC Network.

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