Alabama Basketball: Crimson Tide could be ranked No. 1

In last week’s AP and Coaches polls, Alabama Basketball was ranked No. 3. The Crimson Tide will not be no. 3 when the new rankings come out on Monday. Last week Purdue was No. 1 in both polls. The Boilermakers lost on Sunday to Northwestern, taking them to 23-3 on the season. The No. 1 spot will not be theirs on Monday.

The newest polls should place the Alabama Crimson Tide at No. 1. Last week Houston was No. 2 in both polls. Poll voters need to rethink ranking the Cougars higher than the Crimson Tide since Alabama won the head-to-head matchup in December – on Houston’s home court.

Alabama has not been ranked No. 1 in the polls since the 2002-2003 season. In the Tide’s only time to be ranked No. 1, Alabama held the ranking for two weeks. Over the last few weeks of the 2002-03 the Crimson Tide was unranked.

A No. 1 ranking at any point is glitzy. In substance, the polls do not matter; at least not to the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. The committee uses several sources of analytics to rank teams. In the end, whatever the computer algorithms show, human evaluations rule the final Big Dance seeding decisions.

At least one of the results-based algorithms has had the Crimson Tide at No. 1 for a couple of weeks. On Sunday night, Kevin Pauga’s updated KPI ranking had the Crimson Tide at No. 1, with a widening gap between No. 2, Kansas; and Purdue at No. 3.

Alabama Basketball – No. 1 or No. 2?

In his updated rankings, Ken Pomeroy has Alabama at No. 2, behind Houston. Pomeroy’s predictive algorithm continues to favor Tennessee over Alabama on Wednesday night.

With less than a month to go before Selection Sunday tracking predicted NCAA Tournament seeding draws added attention. Through games of Feb. 11, the Team Rankings prediction algorithm had 18 teams as 100% locks for the NCAA Tournament. The only SEC teams among the 18 were Alabama and Tennessee. Seven more teams were 99% locks, with Arkansas being one from the SEC. Six more teams, including Auburn at 98% were predicted to have 90% or greater chances to make the Big Dance. Texas A&M was predicted to have a 76% chance; Missouri was at 67%; and Kentucky at 49%. Florida (25%), Mississippi State (18%) and Vanderbilt at 13%, were the only other SEC schools predicted to have a chance to make the tournament.

The only NCAA Tournament chances for Ole Miss, Georgia, LSU and South Carolina are to win the SEC Tournament.

Based on current records, a ‘no-algorithm’ assessment is the SEC, led by Alabama Basketball has five NCAA Tournament teams (including Tennessee, Texas A&M, Missouri and Auburn) and two bubble teams in Kentucky and Arkansas.