What Alabama's Goal is for Final Week of Regular Season

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— Alabama's win over Tennessee on Saturday cemented the Crimson Tide (22-7, 12-4 SEC) as on of the top-four seeds in the SEC tournament, earning a double bye. A win in either Tuesday's matchup at Georgia or Saturday's regular-season finale would clinch the No. 2 seed behind Florida in the SEC tournament.

Nate Oats' squad has won eight games in a row starting with a win over Texas A&M back on Feb. 4. The last loss was an "embarassing" blowout at Florida on the first day of February.

"I’m really proud of the month of February," Oats said after Monday's practice. "It went well. We haven’t lost since January, so that’s a long time to go in the SEC. It’s a very good league. We had two games every week— we didn’t have a bye in February. We’ve done a good managing the injuries. The players have done a really good job stepping up as needed and just figuring out ways to win. They haven’t all been pretty, but at the end of the day, they’ve gotten a win."

Under Oats, Alabama has won two SEC tournament titles. Both times, the Tide was the top overall seed in the bracket and did not have to play until Friday of the tournament. Even if Florida (23-6, 14-2 SEC) somehow loses both of its remaining regular season games, the Gators would still have the tiebreaker over Alabama for the No. 1 seed because Florida won the lone regular-season matchup between the two teams.

"We’d like to end up with the highest seed possible," Oats said. "The best seed we can get now is a 2-seed. We’d like to end up with that 2-seed, and we’re in full control over the 2-seed. If we win out, we’re guaranteed the 2-seed. That’s the goal, makes it the best way to go on a run in the SEC tournament. It’s also the best way to get your seeding up for the NCAA tournament.”

Alabama is in a very different position heading into March than the last two seasons. The Tide made its first ever run to the Final Four in 2024, but the team lost three of its last five games in the regular season and got blown out by Florida in the SEC tournament. It was a similar fate for Alabama in 2025, losing four of the last seven in the regular season before suffering another huge loss to the Gators in Nashville. Alabama ended up reaching the Elite Eight last year.

Despite the late-season struggles, Alabama had more buzz those years because of marquee wins in the non-conference schedule. Because the Tide started out this conference slate at 4-4, Alabama dropped out of the polls at one points and is back up to No. 16 now.

"We’ve got to take care of business here this week," Oats said. "Those other ones, you’re trying to figure out how to motivate ‘em to know they still got a chance. Now we're trying to figure out how to motivate guys to remember that while February was a long month, and they did a great job, Florida wasn’t very long ago. And Arizona happened. To me, we’ve still got a big chip on our shoulder… Those other years, maybe we lost a couple at the end, but I think we’ve been ranked in the top 10, top five most of the year. This year, we haven’t. I mean, we fell out of the rankings this year. We’ve still got plenty of, should be motivation, chip on the shoulder, edge to play with— I hope, if we’re a mature group.”