Preview: Alabama basketball 3 things to watch heading into SEC Tournament
As far as Avery Johnson is concerned, the future is now for Alabama basketball. Now, not tomorrow or two games from now — right here in the present.
At least that’s the approach the head coach wants from his players, as Alabama (17-13, 10-8) heads into the SEC Tournament as the No. 5 seed. The Crimson Tide will open up play in the tournament on Thursday where it will play the winner of Wednesday’s game between No. 12 Mississippi State and No. 13 LSU.
Right now, that’s as far a Johnson is allowing his team to look.
“Our first game is our championship game,” he said. “We can’t do anything deep in the SEC unless we’re successful in the first game.”
The reason behind Johnson’s hyper focus on taking things one game at a time lies behind his team’s inability to maintain any bit of consistency this season. Alabama has yet to string together three straight victories in SEC, much less win the four in a row it would take to claim the SEC Tournament title.
In fact, Johnson is still looking for his team to put together two straight halves. In the Alabama’s last game, a 59-54 defeat at Tennessee, the Tide raced to a 36-22 lead at the break before falling apart in the second half, allowing the Volunteers to close out the game on an 11-1 run.
The heartbreaking defeat came after Alabama took down Ole Miss 70-55 at home in a game that appeared to be a sign of the Tide finally putting things together.
"We haven't been a team that can handle prosperity," Johnson said. "We win a game or two and then here comes a clunker in Game 3. We lose and boy their attention and their focus in the film session and on the court, they're locked in."
To be fair, as bad as Alabama’s been at sustaining success, the Tide has shown an uncanny ability to bounce back this season. Two of Alabama’s best games followed crushing defeats to Auburn, as the Tide went on the road to blowout Georgia on Jan. 25 and then pulled off a four-overtime road upset of South Carolina on Feb. 7.
"I think it makes us hungry," said Alabama freshman Braxton Key when asked why the team responds better to losses. "When you lose, you hate that taste in your mouth. Everything is more intense, more focused. We should be like that every time."
Moving into postseason play, Alabama will no longer have the luxury of learning from their defeats.
"It's really do or die here," Key said. "We know what we have to do. If we lose, we know what our fate is going to be. If we win, we know what our fate is going to be. So, it's now or never. It sucks that we put ourselves in this situation. If we had just won out our last four games, we probably would have been a tournament lock."
Three in a row
No matter who wins Tuesday night’s game between Mississippi State and LSU, Alabama will face off against a team it has beaten twice already in the regular season. The Tide took down the Bulldogs 68-58 on Jan. 3 in Starkville, Miss., before beating them 71-62 at home on Jan. 28. Alabama also completed a season sweep against LSU, defeating the Tigers 81-66 in Baton Rouge, La., on Jan 14. and again in a 90-72 victory inside Coleman Coliseum on Feb. 18.
While Johnson realizes beating any opponent three straight times is a difficult task, he emphasized that the postseason is a time to forget about past results.
“I think there’s too much made of it,” Johnson said. “I think right now it’s a new start of a new season for everybody. I know we say that around conference time, but rather than worry about or being overconfident because we’ve had some measured success, we’ve shown our team on video how all those games could have gone either way.”
Johnson said his team spent the majority of practice working on itself Tuesday but did go over a few things it saw from both Mississippi State and LSU. The head coach said he assigned Mississippi State scouting to assistant coach John Pelphrey, while fellow assistant coach Antoine Pettway handled LSU preparations.
“Everybody knows in competitive sports beating a team three times in one year is tough,” junior forward Riley Norris said. “We just got to come in focused, take it one game at a time and whoever we play is going to be a tough matchup for us.”
If Alabama is able to win on Thursday, it would advance to the quarterfinals against No. 4 South Carolina on Friday. A win there would almost certainly lock up a third straight NIT berth for the Tide.
However, as mentioned before, Johnson and his team aren’t looking that far ahead yet.
"We need a game," Johnson said. "We just need a game. There is no looking beyond our first game. Our tournament is our first game... We're not thinking about two games in a row or three games in a row. We're thinking about the first four minutes of Game 1 and then the next four minutes. If you think about two or three games, we're not that good to do that."
Braxton Key named to SEC All-Freshman team
Before the end of practice, Johnson called reporters over to the team’s huddle for some breaking news. It was then that the head coach announced that Key was one of eight freshmen selected to the SEC All-Freshman team announced Tuesday.
After getting mobbed by his teammates, Key delivered a short speech thanking his team and stating he could not have accomplished the achievement without them.
"It means a lot," Key said to reporters later at practice. "It's good to see the hard work pay off. I wouldn't have been able to do it without my teammates, coaches, just everyone put me in great situations to be successful here. I just executed a little bit.”
Key, a native of Charlotte, N.C., enters the SEC Tournament with a team-leading 12.3 points and 29.3 minutes per game, while also topping the team in double-figure scoring games (18) and games scoring more than 20 points (3). He ranks second on the team in assists with 2.4 per game and is third in rebounding (5.7 rpg) and three-point field goal percentage (.333) through regular season play.
Key is the 16th player in school history to make the SEC All-Freshman team and the Tide’s first player to achieve the honor since Shannon Hale did it during the 2013-14 season.
Bonus point
Speaking of Hale, the senior forward was suspended indefinitely in February for conduct detrimental to the team. He was scheduled for a reevaluation of his suspension at the end of the regular season. However, when asked about Hale’s status at practice, Johnson said nothing has changed and that the senior is still out.
Hale was not seen during the Tide’s open practice Tuesday.