Alabama Basketball: On wake-up calls and everybody wanting the Tide

Alabama Basketball: Two games away from a month often unkind to Crimson Tide, NCAA hopes, let’s review Tide prospects going forward.

Saturday’s Alabama Basketball victory was a wake-up call of sorts. Even if the players did not need a reality check, many Alabama basketball fans did. This season is different and fans of Crimson Tide hoops are not quite sure what to make of it.

There is no doubt Nate Oats has rapidly improved Crimson Tide basketball. Rapidly and perhaps, vastly is a more correct statement. Nine consecutive wins is an achievement that has not been surpassed since the 1986-87 season. That season the Crimson Tide won 12 straight in the regular season. Late in the same regular season, the SEC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament, Wimp Sanderson’s team won 11 consecutive games. The season ended with a loss in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. Rick Pitino’s Providence team, led by Billy Donovan, cruised to an easy victory over the Tide.

Basketball is different. Outcomes in one basketball game are harder to predict than one football game. A good example comes from the 1986-87 Crimson Tide that won 25 of 27 games and then lost 103-82 to Pitino’s Friars.

Providence followed that victory with a 15-point win over a strong Georgetown team; then lost by 15 points to a Syracuse team that came close to taking down Indiana for the National Championship. The National Champion Hoosiers barely made it to the Final Four, beating a 15-loss LSU team by one point in the Elite Eight. Two weeks before the LSU vs. Indiana game, the Crimson Tide beat the Bengal Tigers in the SEC Tournament Championship. That’s the thing about college basketball. When it comes to one game, outcomes are uncertain. Alabama basketball fans might want to keep that in mind as the Tide wraps up January and heads into February.

The 2020-21 season has been even less predictable than normal. Good teams having large wins and within days losing by equally large margins. Will that happen to the Crimson Tide? The Tide is not immune. The Mississippi State game was encouraging. Pretty much since Wimp was the coach, an Alabama basketball team coming off a huge win, like LSU, would falter in its following game against a weaker opponent.

Against a better defensive team than LSU, the Tide gutted its way to a victory. After the game, John Petty Jr. spoke for himself and his teammates.

It is the right attitude at the right time. The Tide has too far to go to presume March outcomes in January. Any of the next five games can bring a reversal in fortunes. Going 4-1 would be outstanding, even winning three of the five would be good. Unlike most Alabama basketball Februarys, losing three of the five would not be a disaster.

The future is truly bright for Nate Oats and his program. There will be no sweating an NCAA bid this season. A deep run in the Big Dance is achievable. Nate Oats certainly thinks so. It is fun for Tide fans to speculate on how deep an NCAA run could go. While we’re doing it, let’s remember almost any game can go almost any way.