How Nate Oats is Preparing Alabama for 2026 SEC Tournament

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — For the next week, Alabama basketball will not be associated with its No. 16 spot in the AP Top 25.

Instead, the Crimson Tide will have the No. 2 beside it, as Alabama earned the second seed in the SEC Tournament after Saturday night's 96-84 home win over Auburn in the regular-season finale.

Alabama will first play in the quarterfinals against either the 7-seed Georgia, 10-seed Texas or 15-seed Ole Miss on Friday at 6 p.m. CT in Nashville. The Crimson Tide previously clinched a double-bye as a guaranteed top-4 seed, as UA automatically advanced to the quarterfinals round.

So, how will Alabama prepare for the next few days? Well, head coach Nate Oats outlined a full agenda after the Iron Bowl of Basketball victory (and season sweep).

"Off tomorrow (Sunday)," Oats said. "They'll get in and do some rehab with [Alabama trainer] Clarke [Holter], but nothing is required as far as basketball stuff goes. Monday, we'll get in, it'll really just be more about us, what we need to clean up from [the Auburn] game. And defensively, we've fouled too much of late, but we'll get to watch the film.

"We'll also figure out what we're not doing a great job of, that Georgia and Texas exposed, and really make it about us. I think Tuesday, we'll look to probably put a scout on a little bit, and I'll go full-dive into it. But we're not going to practice super hard on Wednesday or Thursday, because it would be dumb to kind of lose the advantage of being fresh on Friday.

Alabama finished SEC play with a 13-5 record. Of those five losses, two of them came against Georgia (98-88 on March 3) and Texas (92-88 on Jan. 10). While the Tide may be a higher seed than both of these programs, they've proven to be a threat to spoil an SEC Tournament Championship run.

Oats is well aware of this, and it will be heavily emphasized in the middle of next week.

"But by the time Wednesday, that game happens, we'll have a better idea of Georgia or one other team," Oats said. "And then we'll start to put some of the scout stuff in. Some of the stuff that maybe we struggled with, you can put in as walk-through stuff on like Wednesday, Thursday.

"But Monday and Tuesday are going to be all about us, and being smart, staying fresh, working on what we need to work on without getting the guys too tired, because we're going in and trying to win this thing."

Alabama may be the No. 2 seed in the SEC Tournament, but a little over a month ago, that wasn't exactly a realistic possibility. The Crimson Tide started SEC play with a 4-4 record before going on an eight-game win streak. The final loss before the streak started was against Florida on Feb. 1, moving UA to ninth in the conference standings.

Florida has beaten Alabama in each of its last five meetings. The defending national champions are the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament. The Crimson Tide wouldn't play the Gators unless both teams make the SEC Tournament Championship on March 15.

That said, Oats already has his mind on head Todd Golden and company.

"Obviously, Florida is playing great basketball," Oats said. "They probably moved themselves up to a 1-seed [in the NCAA Tournament] based on what happened in college basketball today. They deserve to get moved up to a 1 seed, in my opinion. But we didn't play well at all against them.

"I saw a lot of the first half today [against Kentucky], they looked great. And Kentucky cut it, I saw it was pretty close late. I'll have to, if I got time, maybe look at the second half.

"But we're going to mainly focus on us and those three teams that we play the winner of. And then I don't know after that. There are a lot of other teams that we can play on Saturday. So, I'm gonna probably focus on Texas, Ole Miss and Georgia for right now."