Alabama men’s basketball will face LSU in the SEC tournament championship game Sunday.
Third-seeded LSU upset second-seeded Arkansas in the semifinal game Saturday afternoon, 78-71.
Alabama beat twice this season, breaking an SEC record in January with 23 made three pointers in a 105-75 win in Baton Rouge. It downed the Tigers, 78-60, two weeks later in Coleman Coliseum.
“They’re ridiculously talented,” Oats said of LSU. “Their offensive firepower is as good as anybody, maybe, in the country. I’m sure they’ll make some adjustments and be ready to go. It’s hard to beat a team that’s as good as they are three times in a year.”
Oats did say his staff and players would have liked to have seen a rematch with Arkansas, which dealt the Tide one of its two conference losses last month in Fayetteville and had won 12 consecutive SEC games entering Saturday.
Sunday’s title game will begin at noon CT and air on ESPN.
“It’s gonna be a good one. Like I said yesterday, bring your popcorn. It’s gonna be a great one. It’s gonna be one for the ages. Heavyweight fight, punch-for-punch,” LSU forward Darius Days said. “I feel like it’s gonna be a shootout tomorrow. It’s gonna be a great game.”
Earlier Saturday, top-seeded Alabama dug out from a 15-point hole to beat fourth-seeded Tennessee, 73-68, in the first semifinal game. The win put the Tide in the SEC title game for the first time since 2002.
Alabama, which won its first regular-season conference title in 19 years, has not won the SEC tournament championship game since 1991. The Wimp Sanderson-coached Tide beat the Vols that year but has appeared in the game only twice since then, losing to Kentucky in 1993 and Mississippi State in 2002.
“[A tournament title] would mean everything to me,” Pelham native and senior forward Alex Reese said. “That’s what we came here to do — me, Herb [Jones] and [John Petty], came here to change the culture and get us in a winning direction.”
Jones, from Greensboro, and Petty, from Huntsville, were part of Alabama’s highly-ranked 2017 recruiting class that are playing their final games as seniors. Even though Alabama is comfortably a No. 2 seed for the NCAA tournament, coach Nate Oats has discussed the opportunity for his outgoing seniors to add both regular-season and tournament conference titles to the school’s record book.
“It was part of the reason why I came to school here, to try to turn it to a basketball school,” Jones said. “I think we’re doing that right now. We’ve just got to show up and bring the energy that we brought in the second half [Saturday] for 40 minutes [Sunday].”
Alabama is projected as the highest-ranked No. 2 seed by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi ahead of Sunday evening’s bracket reveal show. Lunardi wrote Saturday the Tide, “will not be a No. 1 seed, regardless of SEC tournament outcomes.”
Oats believes his team should have a chance at the top seed in the tournament, which begins with first-round games next Friday and Saturday in the Indianapolis area.
“I’d guess if we won [the title game], we’d have a pretty good shot of having a one seed,” he said. “Somebody told me — I think there’s maybe 25 teams in the past however-many years who have won both the regular-season and tournament in a Power 5 league, and 20 out of the 25, I think, all got one seeds.
“I’d think we’d be in good company to get one if we won both. If we don’t, we’ve got no control over that. We control how hard we play and we’re going to try to bring it as much as we can.”
Alabama could be without freshman guard Josh Primo, who missed Saturday’s game because of a sprained left MCL.
“Primo’s kind of day-to-day from what the trainer said,” Oats said. “I know he got a work in this morning. He’s going to get a lot more in this afternoon. We’ll see where it takes him. If he’s not good enough to play him tomorrow, we’ll try to get him back for the NCAA tournament at some point.
“But it’s not something where he’s going to be out that required surgery or anything like that. He should be back playing this year — whether it’s tomorrow, next weekend, sweet 16 weekend at some point. Hopefully we get him back soon.”
Alabama and LSU last met in tournament play in 2014, a second-round loss for the Tide. Their previous meeting came in the 1987 championship game, one of six title wins for Alabama. That ranks second in SEC history behind Kentucky’s 31 tournament crowns.
“We got to figure out something to see if we can keep it close with Bama tomorrow,” LSU coach Will Wade said. “We’ve got to obviously do something quite a bit different than we’ve done the first two times. They’ve absolutely blasted us.”
Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.
