Alabama men’s basketball will play its final regular season game on Saturday afternoon at home against the struggling Arkansas Razorbacks.
After back-to-back losses against Tennessee and Florida, the Tide will look to close out the year in the win column before heading to Nashville for the SEC Tournament.
Nate Oats spoke on the fact that Alabama will be tested mentally with what kind of effort the team puts forth on Saturday after the adversity of back-to-back conference losses.
“To me, Saturday’s a character game…We have to come out and obviously play better on defense…We’re going to see what our guys are made of on Saturday,” Oats said.
Alabama has generally responded well from losses this season, with Tuesday’s blowout disaster against Florida being the first time the team has lost back-to-back since its brutal December non-conference stretch of Purdue, Creighton, and Arizona.
But the Tide response against Florida after falling to Tennessee last weekend and letting a conference title slip through its grasp was downright atrocious, being dominated in Gainesville from the first possession.
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Arkansas, who is 6-11 in conference play, is coming off a win against LSU which followed a performance against Kentucky where the Razorbacks put up over 100 points on the road in a loss in Lexington.
Alabama is playing for seeding in Nashville at this point with Tennessee already having locked up the sole regular season title, but the difference between the No. 2 and No. 3 seed is significant.
A win and a Kentucky loss at Tennessee would give Alabama the No. 2 seed, which would result in a double-bye and likely a matchup against Ole Miss, LSU, or Texas A&M on Friday, teams they have already beaten handily.
A win and a Kentucky victory, however drops Alabama to the No. 3 seed, which would still land a double-bye but likely result in a matchup against Florida in its first game.
A loss, however, would be catastrophic and likely drop Alabama out of the top four and a loss of the double-bye and have the team playing on Thursday.
The matchup against Arkansas will take place at 11 A.M. CST at Coleman Coliseum on ESPN.
Michael Brauner is a Senior Sports Analyst and Contributing Writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @MBraunerWNSP
