Alabama basketball team earns No. 3 seed in 2024 SEC Tournament
Alabama will be the No. 3 seed in next week’s 2024 SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament.
The Crimson Tide (21-10, 13-5 SEC) won’t play until Friday, March 15, and will face the winner of Thursday’s matchup between 6-seed Florida and the winner of Georgia-Missouri.
Alabama split the regular-season series with the Gators, which handed the Crimson Tide its most recent loss, and won its meetings with the Bulldogs (85-76) and Tigers (93-75).
Alabama received a double-bye as one of the top-four seeds – along with No. 1 Tennessee, No. 2 Kentucky and No. 4 Auburn – which marks the third time that Alabama has finished with a top-four seed under fifth-year head coach Nate Oats, who discussed the importance of having almost an entire week off between its win over Arkansas and its next game.
“If we’re gonna win that tournament up there, it’s very hard to win it playing four in a row, especially with our depth right now,” said Oats after the overtime win. “Hopefully, we get Rylan (Griffen) back. He’s day-to-day, spending a ton of time with Clarke (Holter), the trainer. But without him, our starting guards played 42, 40 and 39 minutes.
“If you’re gonna try to do that over four straight days, it’s gonna be very difficult. Now, even playing over three straight games would be hard. That’s why it would be helpful if we can get Rylan back or Sam (Walters) or Davin (Cosby) to really step up and give us some minutes.
“Getting a bye till Friday makes it much more likely that you’ve got a chance to win that tournament. So this was big. We needed to win, and our guys knew what was at stake. … It means we’ll be opposite bracket from Tennessee. We’ll see who we end up with on Friday and Saturday, and see if we can’t get a rematch with Tennessee for a third time on Sunday.
“That’d be great.”
The SEC Tournament will be held March 13-17 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. Alabama’s quarterfinal matchup is scheduled for Friday at roughly 8:30 p.m. CT (SEC Network).
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