Alabama men’s basketball will face LSU in the SEC tournament championship game on Sunday.
LSU in third place defeated Arkansas in the semifinal on Saturday afternoon, 78-71.
Alabama won twice this season, breaking an SEC record in January, with 23 points settled in a 105-75 victory at Baton Rouge. He took down the Tigers, 78-60, two weeks later at the Coleman Coliseum.
“They are ridiculously talented,” said Oats of LSU. “Its offensive firepower is as good as that of anyone, perhaps, in the country. I’m sure they’ll make some adjustments and be ready to go. It is difficult to defeat a team as good as three times in a year. “
Oats said his team and players would have liked to have seen a rematch against Arkansas, which gave Tide one of his two defeats at the conference last month in Fayetteville and won 12 consecutive SEC games on Saturday.
Sunday’s title game will start at noon CT and will be broadcast on ESPN.
“Will be nice. As I said yesterday, bring your popcorn. It will be great. It will be one forever. Heavyweight fight, punch by punch, ”said LSU striker Darius Days. “I feel like it’s going to be a shootout tomorrow. It will be a great game. “
The previous Saturday, the best-ranked Alabama recovered from a 15-point hole to beat Tennessee, ranked fourth, 73-68, in the first game of the semifinal. The win put Tide in the SEC title game for the first time since 2002.
Alabama, which won its first conference title in the regular season in 19 years, has not won the SEC tournament since 1991. Tide, coached by Wimp Sanderson, won the Vols that year, but has only appeared in the game twice since, losing to Kentucky in 1993 and the state of Mississippi in 2002.
“[A tournament title] it would mean everything to me, ”said Alex Reese, senior striker and native of Pelham. “That’s what we came to do – me, Herb [Jones] and [John Petty], came here to change the culture and put us in a winning direction. “
Jones from Greensboro and Petty from Huntsville were part of Alabama’s 2017 recruiting class, which is playing its final games as veterans. Even though Alabama is comfortably a No. 2 seed for the NCAA tournament, coach Nate Oats discussed the opportunity for his outgoing veterans to add regular season conference and tournament titles to the school’s record book.
“It was part of the reason I came to school here, to try to turn it into a basketball school,” said Jones. “I think we are doing this now. We just have to show up and bring the energy that we brought in the second half [Saturday] for 40 minutes [Sunday]. “
Alabama is projected as the # 2 seed with the highest ranking by ESPN Joe Lunardi before the Sunday night key reveal show. Lunardi wrote on Saturday the Tide, “it will not be seed # 1, regardless of the results of the SEC tournament.”
Oats believes his team should have a chance to take first place in the tournament, which starts with first round games next Friday and Saturday in the Indianapolis region.
“I think if we won [the title game], we would have a good chance of having a seed, ”he said. “Someone told me – I think there may have been 25 teams in the past many years that won both the regular season and the tournament in a Power 5 league, and 20 of the 25, I think, all won a seed.
“I think we would be in good company to get one if we won both. If we don’t, we have no control over that. We control how hard we play and we will try to bring it out as much as we can. “
Alabama could be without freshman guard Josh Primo, who missed Saturday’s game because of a twist in the left MCL.
“Cousin is kind of everyday for what the coach said,” said Oats. “I know he got a job this morning. He will receive much more this afternoon. We’ll see where it takes you. If he is not good enough to face him tomorrow, we will try to bring him back to the NCAA tournament at some point.
“But it is not something he is going to leave that required surgery or anything. He should return to play this year – be it tomorrow, next weekend, sometime during the sweet 16 of the week. I hope we get it back soon. “
Alabama and LSU last met in a tournament in 2014, a second round loss to Tide. The previous encounter took place in the 1987 championship game, one of Alabama’s six victories. This ranks second in SEC history, behind Kentucky’s 31 tournament crowns.
“We have to find something to see if we can maintain the relationship with Bama tomorrow,” said LSU coach Will Wade. “Obviously, we have to do something a little different than what we did the first two times. They absolutely blew us up. “
Mike Rodak is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.