Back in NCAA Tournament picture, Alabama basketball must maintain momentum

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Lost in the afterglow of Alabama basketball’s 83-64 victory over No. 4 Auburn on Wednesday, first-year head coach Nate Oats brought up a topic that had previously been somewhat dormant in Tuscaloosa over the past few weeks — the NCAA Tournament.

“If we’re gonna make a run to try to play in the NCAA Tournament, you’ve got to get signature wins,” Oats said following the game. "You’ve got to get these ones. We’re gonna have to get some road wins too. It’s good to get that monkey off our back. We kind of got a signature win, now. Now we’ve got to go on a run and get wins, period.”

Wednesday marked Alabama’s first Quadrant 1 win of the season, the highest resume-booster in the NCAA’s four-tiered rating system. It also helped the Crimson Tide jump 14 spots to No. 44 in the NCAA’s latest NET rankings. While Alabama wasn’t part of ESPN’s Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology, the Crimson Tide is beginning to get mentioned as a “bubble team.”

Quadrant 1 victories are defined as home wins over teams ranked No. 1-30, neutral wins over teams ranked No. 1-50 or road wins over teams ranked No. 1-75. From there, wins are classified as Quadrant 2 (31-75 home, 51-100 neutral, 76-135 away), Quadrant 3 (76-160 home, 101-200 neutral, 135-240 away) and Quadrant 4 (161-353 home, 201-353 neutral, 241-353 away). The breakdown is ultimately used by the NCAA Tournament selection committee to determine the tournament field as well as its seeding.

Alabama is currently 1-4 in Quadrant 1 games while posting a 2-1 record in Quadrant 2, a 3-2 mark in Quadrant 3 and a 3-0 record in Quadrant 4. The Crimson Tide’s resume could have been even stronger if not for a couple missed opportunities. Alabama let two potential Quad-1 wins slip through its hands with a 73-71 road defeat to Penn State before blowing a 21-point lead on the road in a loss to Florida.

Still, even with some of the early slips ups, the Crimson Tide finds itself in decent shape, ranked at No. 44 in NET and No. 45 according to Ken Pomeroy.

“We may have been counted out early, but the SEC’s good enough, if you come in and play well enough during conference play, you can play your way into the NCAA Tournament,” Oats said Friday. “So now we’ve got a signature win, you look at our NET, Ken Pom, all the analytics like we’re there. There are teams that have been at-large bids in the NCAA Tournament with a lot worse metrics than we have right now.”

Alabama’s next two games currently fall into the Quadrant 2 category as the Crimson Tide hosts Missouri (No. 75 in the NET) on Saturday before traveling to Vanderbilt (No. 134 in the NET) on Jan. 22. After that, Alabama will have what is currently a Quadrant 3 matchup when it hosts Kansas State (No. 101 in the NET) on Jan. 25 in the Big12/SEC Challenge.

The Crimson Tide’s next chance at Quad-1 glory comes with a trip to LSU on Jan. 29. The Tigers are currently ranked No. 26 in the NET and are the lone remaining undefeated team in SEC play. While an upset in Baton Rouge, La., could put the Crimson Tide comfortably in the NCAA Tournament picture come the end of the month, that will only be the case if Alabama takes care of business over the next week.

“We’ve got to make sure our energy’s up,” Oats said Friday. “We’ve got to make sure we’re not still living on past success. If you come in and lose to Missouri, the Auburn game really didn’t mean that much.”

Alabama has won seven of its last 10 games dating back to a Nov. 29 victory over Southern Miss to close out the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament. Despite the recent run of success, the Crimson Tide’s largest winning streak of the season stands at three with consecutive wins over Samford, Belmont and Richmond.

Alabama knows repeating that string of victories will be substantially harder in the coming week.

“When SEC play starts, I kind of treat it like the tournament,” Alabama guard James “Beetle” Bolden said. “You only get one game at a time to prove that you’re one of the teams there. So when the (SEC) play starts, I just try to convince my teammates that we got to take it game by game, just continue to be us and just continue to trust Coach Oats’ plan.”

Alabama (9-7, 2-2 in the SEC) will host Missouri (9-7, 1-3) on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. CT. The game will be televised on SEC Network.

Alabama won its lone meeting against Missouri last season, beating the Tigers 70-60 in Columbia, Mo. Missouri enters the matchup losers of three of its last four games, including a 72-45 road defeat to Mississippi State earlier this week. The Tigers lone win over that span was a 91-75 home victory over Florida.

“Missouri just smashed Florida, who we lost to,” said Oats of UA’s upcoming opponent. “Missouri’s a really good team that’s shown a lot of grit and character. They’ve had a lot of injuries that have affected them, but shoot, their guys came out and looked great.”

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