TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — As Alabama head coach Nate Oats tried to explain his team’s 110-98 loss to Missouri on Wednesday, a fire alarm interrupted the news conference.
“Your attention please! Your attention please!” a voice said as a siren blared. “A fire has been reported in the building.”
The moment felt like a metaphor for the pressure cooker the Crimson Tide have found themselves in for the past year since losing to the eventual national champion UConn in their unexpected run to the Final Four — and the journey they’re on to earn another shot at the crown.
“We’d like to get back here and win this whole thing,” Oats said after that loss to the Huskies. “And I think that’s what our goal is going to be. We’re going to aim to get back here.”
Exactly 322 days later, No. 4 Alabama will try to avoid a third consecutive loss when it hosts No. 17 Kentucky on Saturday (6 p.m. ET, ESPN) in the Tide’s second straight appearance on “College Gameday” following last weekend’s 94-85 home loss to No. 1 Auburn, their archrival. It marked the beginning of a grueling seven-game stretch for Alabama against top-25 teams (half of which currently rank inside the top 10).
Wednesday’s loss at Missouri was emblematic of Alabama’s long road back to the Final Four: There is minimal margin for error for a team chasing the first national championship in program history. But the Crimson Tide know no matter how they emerge from this gauntlet, they won’t get anyone’s pity. They’re among the game’s elite programs and making a run to San Antonio is now the expectation.
Anything short will feel like defeat.
These next five games will amplify the burden on an Alabama squad that could solidify a top seed on Selection Sunday if the Tide don’t squander opportunities and limp into the postseason. But the stakes don’t scare Oats — he loves them because, as he said, the challenges are the only way to prepare Alabama for what’s ahead. That’s why he coaches his team to run toward pressure, not from it.
“To be honest with you, we know we’re one of the best teams in the country, but [Oats] does a good job of letting us know we’re not anywhere close to where we need to be, and we know that, too,” senior guard Chris Youngblood told ESPN. “We know we’re not playing anywhere near to what we’re capable of. So just knowing that in the back of our head, we have no choice but to just keep on being hungry.”
That principle was evident in late January when Oats benched Mark Sears, a second-team Associated Press All-American in 2023-24, in the second half of an 80-73 win over LSU amid a lackluster performance — a stunning move for one of the top players in the country that prompted his mother to express her frustration on Facebook.
While he sat on the bench for the second half, Sears was supportive of his teammates and dumbfounded. Sure, coaches send messages to their teams to prove that every player must abide by the same standards. But midway through an SEC game? That’s almost unheard of.
After further reflection, however, Sears later acknowledged that he hadn’t been the leader his team needed over that stretch.
“Me and [Oats] talked about it after the game and everything was good,” Sears said. “Everything has been really good since then. I feel like everybody is together and we’re going to really need to be together, especially coming through this [seven-game] stretch with the schedule we’ve got.”
The shocking decision revitalized Sears, who has averaged 19.8 points and 4.8 assists since that Jan. 25 night; it also strengthened his bond with Oats and helped the team to refocus on their lofty goals.
With the return of Sears and Grant Nelson, coupled with new additions like Rutgers transfer Clifford Omoruyi and top-30 recruit Labaron Philon, Alabama started the season ranked second in the AP poll. The Tide were also picked to win the SEC, which could end the season with a record number of bids on Selection Sunday.
To live up to those expectations, the Tide will have to obsess over the details.
“Adversity is an opportunity for us to get better,” Oats said. “The obstacle is in the way, but sometimes, the adversity is adversity we create for ourselves. Sometimes, it’s putting our life in a way that we didn’t want it, but no matter how the adversity comes, it makes you better if you handle it the right way.
“Sometimes as a coach, I’ve got to put a little adversity in the team to see how they handle it and see if we can make them better.”
Toward the end of practice on a cool mid-February day in Tuscaloosa, Oats reminded sophomore Jarin Stevenson of that tenet following a few sloppy defensive possessions.
“You’re about to go from having the best practice of your career,” Oats told Stevenson, “to the worst.”
But the Tide don’t question their head coach’s tactics because they all have the same mission: to write a different ending than last season’s.
“We have to make sure every practice is a practice that we get something out of, and we have to keep stacking good practices and we can’t get the big head,” Sears said. “And if we do, that’s when everything goes wrong. So we just have to be level-headed and have the mindset of just wanting to get better and continuing to get better.”
Oats and other returning players from last season’s team remember the way they felt after the Final Four defeat. Simply making the program’s first Final Four appearance wasn’t enough. And they knew it.
“We’re going to aim to win the final game,” Oats said after an excellent UConn squad outplayed his in that 86-72 loss. “We just got to keep knocking at the door.”
Because Alabama knows all too well how quickly it can close.
“I feel like we were up there with the top teams last season, but we knew that after we played UConn, we knew they were the better team,” Nelson told ESPN. “They played better than us that night. I mean, they played better than us the whole season, so we knew we had a lot to work on if we wanted to win a national championship.
“We all came [into this season] motivated knowing what our potential was, but we knew that the work wasn’t over, and we had to still put in the work to try to win the whole thing.”