No wonder this landscape looks a tad strange. Alabama keeps running up massive wins and eye-popping numbers, and it’s not even October.
No, Nick Saban isn’t the coach cutting a swath through the SEC. He’s back in his office working on recruiting and spring practice plans. It’s the Nate Oats machine that has been storming up the rankings and standings, and now that the Tide have been named No. 1 in the NCAA bracket preview, the question must be addressed,
Just how good are these guys?
They’ve been a rolling semi leaving dazed victims by the side of the road. They flattened Georgia 108-59, Vanderbilt 101-44, LSU 106-66. The last SEC team to batter three conference opponents by 40 or more points was Kentucky in 1956. The same year Elvis had his first hit. This by a team voted in the pre-season to finish fifth in the league. “Wrong team at the wrong time,” Vanderbilt coach Jerry Stackhouse said after the Commodores had been steamrolled. “As good an offensive team as I’ve seen live or competed against in our league that I can remember,” Georgia coach Mike White said from the business end of the 108-59 score last Saturday.
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The Tide have won 11 SEC games by double-digits, something no Alabama team had accomplished in 66 years. They have broken 100 points five times this season, but have also not allowed the other team to reach 70 in any of their 14 SEC games. They’re sixth in the nation in scoring, but they’re also third in field goal percentage defense, and second against the 3-pointer. No wonder the scoreboard occasionally smokes. One side of it anyway.
“Our defense is actually ranked ahead of our offense right now in efficiency metrics,” Oats said. “I think when you put together a defensive group with some offensive firepower, you’ve got those games where you kind of go on fire and blow a team out. We’ve told our team from day 1, us making shots should only determine the margin of victory, not whether we win or lose. Our defense needs to be good enough to carry us even when we’re not making shots. And I feel like, for the most part, it has.”
They have created routs using a variety of weapons. They outrebounded Longwood 67-38 . . . hit 21 3-pointers against Jacksonville State and made seven of their first 11 . . . outlasted North Carolina 103-101 in four overtimes with a 47-14 gap in bench points . . . handed out 29 assists on 36 field goals against Vanderbilt . . . defended Missouri into 33 percent shooting and 3-for-28 from the 3-point arc . . . buried LSU with a 36-6 run in the first half . . . shredded Houston’s mighty defense with a 42-21 run in the final 17 minutes.
They had their largest win ever over Kentucky, and LSU, and Georgia. The 57-point spread against Vanderbilt was Alabama’s widest ever in a conference game. The 78-52 blasting of Kentucky gave John Calipari his second worst road loss. The Tide became only the third SEC team in 50 years to win the first seven league games by double digits, and not just double digits but an average of 21 points.
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They are not perfect. Tennessee stopped them with defense in Knoxville, Gonzaga outscored them 100-90 and Connecticut picked them off early. The only other loss in the 23-4 record was the baffling day in Norman when they were wiped out by Oklahoma 93-69, having done unto them what they have so often done unto others. An outlier, it would seem.
They climbed to No. 1 in the coaches’ poll for the first time ever. With early wins over North Carolina and Houston, they became the first team in 57 years to beat two No. 1 opponents before New Year’s Day.
Following their last three defeats, they won the next games by 20, 57 and 49 points. So much for losing streaks. “I hope we don’t have any more that we have to respond like that after a loss,” Oats said.
They were the first Power 5 team in 43 years to start league play 12-0 and outscore its opponents by at least 250 combined points.
They’ve done all this offensive damage with only two players averaging in double figures. Brandon Miller is the nation’s highest scoring freshman at 18.7 points a game. He put up 36 against Gonzaga. “Even when teams try to take him out,” Oats said, “he finds ways.”
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The other double-figure scorer is Mark Sears, who last season was all-MAC at Ohio and scored 37 points in his final game as a Bobcat. The group of newcomers — four freshmen and four transfers — account for 78 percent of the Alabama scoring.
All that sounds very potent. But what now?
March is coming, and to understand the depth of Alabama’s hopes for the future, we should consider how maddening the past has been.
It took 37 NCAA tournaments for the Crimson Tide to even be invited, back in 1975. That means SEC rival Kentucky had already won four tournament championships before Alabama played its first tournament game.
They have been to nine Sweet 16s since and survived none of them. Not that they haven’t been a stubborn obstacle.
In 1976, they took Indiana into the final two minutes before losing 74-69. Those Hoosiers finished as unbeaten national champions and Alabama was their closet call in the tournament.
In 1982, they lost 74-69 to the eventual national champion again in the Sweet 16 round, this time North Carolina. It wasn’t a Tar Heel freshman guard named Michael Jordan who did them in. He took only six shots and scored 11 points. It was a 26-11 North Carolina gap at the free throw line.
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In 1990, Loyola Marymount’s foot-to-the-floor offense became a March sensation and carried the Lions to the Elite Eight. In three of their NCAA Tournament games, they scored 111, 149 and 101. In the regional semifinal they barely escaped Alabama 62-60.
In 2004, the Tide knocked off No. 1 seed Stanford and defending national champion Syracuse to get to their first-ever Elite Eight. Then the momentum flickered out and they lost to Connecticut 87-71. They have never made it that far since.
But they almost did in the 2021 Sweet 16 when they chased UCLA into overtime before losing 88-78. It might have been a happier ending for them had they not missed 14 of their 25 free throws.
So March awaits an Alabama breakthrough. “It’s nice to make some history around here,” Oats said about all the scoring records the Tide have been stacking.
But the big history is yet to come.