Coming off Saturday's tough loss in Birmingham to Arizona, in which the second half really got away from the Tide, the silver lining in all this is that the SEC may not be as good from top to bottom as the conference was a year ago. Alabama still has a lot to figure out before March after dropping all three of the biggest out-of-conference games, in which each loss got worse. From what I have seen from other SEC teams to this point, it is unlikely we will see a team on the conference slate as Purdue, Gonzaga, or Arizona. The same concerns remain as most years under Nate Oats, and that of course being out-muscled and outrebounded against the best competition.
The next three non-conference games should be good get-right games for Alabama before the SEC schedule starts. Though it seems the SEC will not be as daunting as it was a year ago, it will still be a gauntlet. We know there are scorers on this team and points will rarely be a problem for this Crimson Tide team, but against conference opponents like Florida or Kentucky, amongst others, we will be a much smaller team in the front court and will need to figure out how to minimize the rebounding differential as much as possible.
Labaron Philon cannot regularly be the leading rebounder like he was against Arizona, where nobody else was even close to double digits. We have seen bits and pieces from Aiden Sherrell, but would like for him to be a consistent rebounder, especially on the offensive end.
At some point, you would like to see Noah Williamson become the player we expected to see after transferring in, but I am not holding my breath. He seems very soft, does not add a lot when he is on the court, but it would be great to see with his size being able to at least get five plus rebounds a game.
Health has been a concern over the first two months of the season, and hopefully, going into the first SEC regular season game against Kentucky, everybody will be ready to go. I would like to see how this team responds to that embarrassing second-half performance in Birmingham and use it for motivation for the rest of the season. Sitting behind Nebraska in mid-December in the rankings is not where I expected this team to ever sit, but I do have faith in Coach Oats and his staff getting it figured out before the madness begins.