Alabama Basketball: Not time to worry, weekend brought good and bad news
By Ronald Evans
Alabama Basketball lost Saturday but overall the weekend had more good news than bad.
No one, coaches, players nor fans was satisfied Alabama Basketball lost on Saturday. Oklahoma busted the Crimson Tide 10-game win streak. A resume-enhancing opportunity slipped away with too many early turnovers and too few (zero) second-chance points.
Losses are part of basketball, far more than in football and not only because a roundball season has many more games. The last undefeated, major college basketball team was Indiana. That was in the 1975-76 season. The Crimson Tide came close to beating the Hoosiers in that season’s NCAA Tournament but that is another story.
As a result of the loss, the Alabama Crimson Tide will drop in the next AP and Coaches polls. There is no reason for concern. Consider those polls for entertainment purposes only. One ranking matters more than all the others. It is the NCAA NET ranking. A loss to a good team is not severely punished in the NET.
Through the games of January 30, the Crimson Tide NET ranking is 11. Though there are nine regular-season games left, the Tide is playing for NCAA seeding and Saturday’s loss will have little or no impact.
The NET can confuse casual fans. It is somewhat complicated. Every game a team plays and every game each opponent plays, plus every game each opponent’s, opponents play, is included in the calculation. What results is a flow of frequently new data, that is both good and bad.
The Alabama basketball bad from the weekend goes beyond the Tide’s loss. Clemson, Providence, Auburn, Arkansas and LSU also lost.
Outweighing the bad is that Missouri, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Florida, Furman and East Tennessee State all won. More good news is the SEC topped the Big 12 with five wins and four losses in the Saturday Challenge. Other good news for Alabama basketball is seven teams (not including Bama), ranked inside the NCAA NET top 20, also lost.
More: What went wrong against the Sooners
At 14-4, the Crimson Tide only needs to regain some form lost in its last three games. Two solid data-crunchers, Warren Nolan and Ken Pomeroy remain bullish on the Crimson Tide. Both predict the Tide will finish the regular season with 20 wins or more.
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The biggest current worry for the Crimson Tide is Herbert Jones’ nagging lower back pain. Herbert may not be injured but he is playing hurt and his leaping ability has been adversely affected. He needs to heal and perhaps to miss, not just practices but sit for a game.