Alabama Basketball: Some perspective for Crimson Tide football fans

For many Alabama Crimson Tide fans, Alabama Football is more important than Alabama Basketball. Nate Oats can rightly talk about the University of Alabama as a championship school. But beyond SEC championships, Alabama basketball has not produced any.

This season excitement about Crimson Tide Hoops has been abundant. Alabama fans who care about basketball, but at nowhere near the same level of passion as caring for football, have enjoyed roundball success.

That success got a slap in the face on Saturday in Norman, OK. The Tide’s 24-point loss brought back a memory of Brent Musburger during the 2012 National Championship game. Talking about the Tide’s destruction of Notre Dame in that game, Musburger said, if the game had been a prizefight, “they’d called it off.”

But it was a basketball game, rather than a football game, and there is a big difference. The sport of basketball is not a linear progression in the regular season. It only becomes one at tournament time. Until then, one game means little, even a big win, but especially a big loss.

In trying to make sense of the outcome of some games, a transitive property conclusion is flawed. For example, on Saturday, Mississippi State beat a very good (as in maybe Final Four good) TCU team. Earlier in the week, TCU beat Oklahoma by 27 points – and Alabama has beaten the Bulldogs twice. Nothing in those games indicates Oklahoma could blow out the Crimson Tide, but the Sooners did.

In terms of expectations for Alabama Basketball’s post-season chances, Joe Lunardi explained the Tide’s loss to OU as “Alabama used its mulligan.” In the main NCAA Tournament bracket projections, Alabama is still a 1-seed.

Otherwise what happened in Norman, OK was an example of maybe there is more to what is not known, than was previously thought. Alabama basketball fans, along with many college basketball experts, have for weeks believed the Crimson Tide was a legit Final Four contender. And maybe it is.

How the Alabama team responds in the next three games; home against Vandy, away vs. LSU and home, for Florida, will be telling. The Crimson Tide should win all three. Nate Oats may have to change his lineup and rotation if problems from the last two games are repeated. On Saturday, Oats described his team as back at ground zero.

Alabama Basketball Course Correction – Not Overreaction

But an overreaction could be nearly as bad as no reaction at all. Alabama, for example, did not ‘live by the three and die by the three’ on Saturday. That overused term has little merit. Alabama lost because it did not defend Oklahoma. Alabama did not take a bunch of bad shots and whatever style of offensive basketball a team plays, it must defend.

As Oats explained in post-game comments,

"We weren’t the toughest; we weren’t the grittiest; we weren’t the most blue collar; and we didn’t play the hardest tonight"

The Oklahoma loss dropped the Crimson Tide one spot, to No. 4 in the NCAA NET rankings. The results (rather than predictive) driven KPI algorithm still calculates the Tide as No. 1.