Alabama regained its pace on Wednesday, even if its perimeter stroke was lost. LSU’s 78-60 loss reversed the downward trend of the previous three games and, at the moment, solidified its position to be among the first seeds in the NCAA tournament.
Crimson Tide (15-4, 10-0 SEC) is in control of their future postseason thanks to healthy leadership in the league standings, their record and programming strength. That, of course, will be challenged with a Saturday trip to Missouri to face the only team currently ranked that remains on Alabama’s regular season calendar.
Let’s take a look at Alabama’s position and what it should happen as it aims for its deepest March run in the show’s history.
SEC Classification
This trip to Missouri may be as close as possible to a conference title game in early February.
Alabama is the only team undefeated in the conference and Missouri is second in the standings. The thing is, the Tigers are the only team with three losses in the league, so a victory in Alabama would give Tide the tiebreaker over the four-game teams in Missouri, Florida and Tennessee.
Alabama still have a trip to the other four-game losing team, Arkansas, with a home win over the Hogs already on paper.
After Missouri, Alabama does not face a single team with a SEC winning record with South Carolina (3-4), Georgia (4-6), Texas A&M (2-6) and Vanderbilt (1-6) in the next four the time.
In addition, Alabama’s 10-0 league record is its best since the 1955-56 team was 14-0.
NCAA Tournament
Alabama remains a strong contender for the top two places in the exclusive Indianapolis tournament. He remains well positioned in the NET ranking used as a guide by the NCAA tournament selection committee. The victory over LSU took Tide up one position, to 8th position.
Some important classifications / classifications:
- NET Classification: No. 8
- KenPom: No. 7 (Strength of schedule No. 22)
- Sagarin: No. 10 (Strength of schedule No. 22)
- ESPN BPI: No. 14 (No. 26 schedule strength, No. 4 record strength)
- CBS Sports RPI: No. 6
Zooming out, Alabama has a 5-1 record in Quad 1 games after the road loss to NET No. 18 Oklahoma. Tide’s worst defeat, in terms of ranking, is NET No. 78 Western Kentucky – a loss in Quad 3, since it was at home.
Most of the key projections have not been updated since Wednesday night’s games, but Alabama was in good shape entering the victory over LSU. It had an expected average spread of 2.18 – the sixth best nationally – among the 93 projections surveyed on bracketmatrix.com. One has Maré as the No. 1 seed, with no worse prediction than No. 4.
ESPN Joe Lunardi updated its projection late Thursday morning and was significant for Alabama. He had Alabama as the No. 1 seed for the first time in his history of forecasting media. Gonzaga, Baylor and Michigan were the other four main seeds.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or in Facebook.