Can Alabama Basketball refocus ahead of tough road trip?
While Alabama’s loss to Tennessee over the weekend put the Crimson Tide in a difficult position in terms of winning the SEC regular season, Bama still has the capability to accomplish all of its goals.
When the Tide fell to the Vols in Tuscaloosa, it marked Alabama’s first home defeat in league play since it lost to Texas A&M way back in March of 2022.
The Tide will have to find a way to quickly recalibrate in preparation for a game that has the potential to be equally difficult. Alabama will go on the road to play a Florida team that has been one of the hottest in the SEC over the last two months.
The Gators have gone 9-3 in their last 12 games, with one of those losses coming to Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Florida took Alabama to overtime in that game, nearly becoming the team to break the Tide’s home winning streak before Tennessee could. The Gators have been impressive, particularly offensively, throughout the conference schedule. In a season that hasn’t been kind to ranked teams going on the road, Alabama will need to bring its best effort.
Tough rebound for the Tide
This game is the back end of Alabama’s toughest two-game stretch since it had Tennessee and Auburn back-to-back in January. Given that Bama has already lost the home game in this stretch, it will have to win in unfamiliar territory to avoid its first losing streak since mid-December.
More importantly, another loss could drop Alabama from a tie for first place to out of the top four entirely in a span of just four days. Losing the double-bye would obviously hurt Alabama’s SEC Tournament odds, as well as its NCAA Tournament seeding. It would also be bad for optics considering where the Tide was once positioned in the standings. Sure, the difficult scheduling dynamics would come into play, but it’s always best to win the games and not leave anything up to chance.
It will be fascinating to see the response of Nate Oats and his team as they enter a hostile environment with their backs already against the wall.