Alabama Basketball: March and Auburn mean serious hoops

The importance of playing your best basketball in March is an old axiom. For the Alabama Basketball program, past March performances have brought both joy and disappointment. The story of how this March will play out gets its first chapter Wednesday night as the Crimson Tide hosts Auburn in Tuscaloosa.

This week Nate Oats remembered what Bruce Pearl told him a couple of years ago.

"Bruce told me in Year 2, and he’s right, it’s good for basketball in the state of Alabama that both teams are really good. This game has always been a big rivalry game inside the state of Alabama. It’s now a big game across the country. When Auburn plays Alabama, it’s got national meaning now."

Oats is right, but first, the game is Iron Bowl, 2023 No. 2. No. 1 was in Auburn a couple of weeks ago with the Crimson Tide winning 77-69. Late January and February were unkind to the Tigers. Going back to a Jan. 25, home loss to Texas A&M, Auburn has lost seven of its last 10 games. The Tigers are an NCAA Tournament ‘Bubble’ team edging close to the dreaded ‘last four in’ status.

Alabama and Auburn are at different levels this season. If Wednesday’s game did not have the rivalry factor, no one would give Auburn any chance. But Bruce Pearl’s team has quality athletes and Pearl-coached teams may not always play smart, but always play hard.

Alabama should not take Auburn lightly. On Monday, talking about the previous game, Nate Oats said,

"… we’ve got to figure out a better way to guard Wendell Green because he torched us …We’ve got to have a better plan. I didn’t feel like we as a coaching staff had a good enough plan to go against what they were going to do… they mix up what they do… They got a lot of more in-game adjustments — or game-to-game adjustments, I should say, maybe. We do some, but I think we’ve got, kind of a really strong base and we’re going to be good at this and this is what we do."

Alabama Basketball Motivation

The Alabama basketball team will have more than ‘Iron Bowl’ motivation. A win Wednesday night will give the Alabama Crimson Tide the outright SEC Regular Season Championship. Even to a team with a lock on an NCAA Tournament 1-seed, every championship matters.

In Tuesday night’s SEC games, Florida beat Georgia, 77-67; Mississippi State beat South Carolina, 74-68; Texas A&M beat Ole Miss, 69-61 and Tennessee beat Arkansas, 75-57.