10-2.

If you told Alabama basketball fans that 10-2 would be the Crimson Tide’s record at the conclusion of the non-conference portion of the season, most would have gladly accepted those numbers.

With Alabama’s 84-64 win over Jackson State on Tuesday evening, the Crimson Tide earned its 10th win of the season. The last time that an Alabama team finished nonconference play with 10 wins? All the way back to the 2014-15 season. That Crimson Tide team finished with a 10-3 record at the same point in the season.

However, that team didn’t have nearly as many quality opponents on its schedule.

When examining the 2014-15 Alabama schedule, the highlight victory for the Crimson Tide is a 56-53 win over college basketball blue-blood UCLA. However, the rest of the wins were not nearly as impressive: Towson, Western Carolina, Southern Miss, Arizona State, USF, Tennessee Tech, Stillman, Appalachian State and North Florida.

Its three losses? Iowa State, Xavier and Wichita State.

“I think it’s been [since the] 2014-15 season is the last time that we had 10 wins heading into SEC play and to do it with the schedule that we’ve put together,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said on Monday, prior to the team winning its 10th game. “I think that speaks to the level we’ve gotten the program here. My guess would be the last time they had 10 wins going into SEC play the schedule looked significantly different than what it looked like for us this year.

“It was one of the tougher nonconference schedules in the country.”

Oats is absolutely right. According to KenPom, Alabama has the 15th-toughest strength of schedule in the country. Other metrics, such as the NET rankings, have the Crimson Tide listed even higher at fifth.

In Quad 1, Alabama is 2-2 — its only two losses of the season. In Quad 2, the Crimson Tide is 3-0. In Quads 3 and 4, Alabama is 2-0 and 3-0, respectively. And when you consider that the Crimson Tide’s only two losses came at the hands of UConn — the No. 1 team in the country according to KenPom — and Gonzaga (who is No. 11 on KenPom), then those neutral-site losses don’t look nearly as bad.

Let’s examine Alabama’s schedule to this point.

The Crimson Tide eased into the 2022-23 season with wins over Longwood, Liberty, South Alabama and Jacksonville State, with only the game against the Jaguars being played on the road. From there, Alabama traveled to Portland, Ore. to play in the Phil Knight Invitational. In the tournament, the Crimson Tide opened with a big win over a red-hot then-No. 12 Michigan State team before losing to then-No. 20 UConn. However, Alabama bounced back in a big way in its final game of the tournament, downing then-No. 1 North Carolina in a four-overtime win that put the Crimson Tide on the radar for college basketball fans.

A win over South Dakota State served as a bridge between two No. 1 teams, as Alabama then traveled to then-No. 1 Houston and handed the Cougars their first loss of the year. A win over Memphis to avenge last year’s loss was then followed by a 100-90 loss at the hands of then-No. 15 Gonzaga in the C.M. Newton Classic in Birmingham, Ala.

Tuesday night’s win over Jackson State marked the end of the nonconference portion, with just one road game at Oklahoma on Jan. 28 for the SEC/Big 12 Challenge remaining.

It hasn’t been the easiest of schedules by far, but Oats believes that the toughness of the schedule accomplished its purpose.

“I would say we’ve gotten done a lot of what we needed to get done,” Oats said. “We’ve gotten quality wins. I mean, you look at Houston: they went on the road and won at Virginia. That’s going to stay one of the best wins in the country over the course of it. I mean, Houston may not lose the rest of the year. You look at Gonzaga: we lost to Gonzaga but Gonzaga may not lose the rest of the year. Some of these teams we’ve played — I mean, UConn’s really good. They’re in the Big East, so they’re gonna have some tough games but they’re gonna stay top-five in the country the rest of the year would be my guess.

“Some of these teams we’ve played are gonna remain top-five, top-10 teams. We’ve got wins over — North Carolina’s gonna start playing much better in my opinion, Michigan State’s gonna get healthy and be a contender in the Big Ten again — so these wins have put us in a spot to get a good NCAA tournament seed if we take care of business in the SEC. But they’ve put us in a great spot.”

According to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, Alabama is projected to be an automatic qualifier as the winner of the SEC Tournament, earning itself a spot as a 2-seed in the NCAA tournament. Considering the Crimson Tide’s nonconference start, a 2-seed is an adequate projection. However, there is still an entire SEC portion of the season that Alabama has to trudge through.

Last season, the Crimson Tide was in a similar position that it is today. Alabama finished the nonconference portion of the season 9-3 with wins over Houston, Gonzaga and Miami. However, a disastrous loss to Memphis and a slip-up against Davidson in the C.M. Newton Classic began a series that saw the Crimson Tide lose five of eight games.

This year, Oats and Alabama are dead-set on not repeating the same mistakes as last season.

“I thought we were in a decent spot last year, we just didn’t continue to improve like we needed to,” Oats said. “We need to get better game-to-game, we’ve gotta get our defensive identity back. But if we could get back to who we were defensively playing well and take care of business in the SEC and get us a decent record, we’ve set ourselves up to have a pretty good NCAA tournament seed based on what we’ve done in nonconference so far.”

There are already signs that this team is not going to make the same mistakes. Complacency was an issue that ran rampant among last year’s squad. Make no mistake: the 2022-23 Crimson Tide has its own mistakes that it needs to work on. However, complacency does not seem to be one of those concerns.

Over the course of the season thus far, turnovers have grown to become one of Alabama’s biggest glaring issues. The Crimson Tide has averaged just under 17 turnovers per game, with the game-by-game numbers slowly but steadily increasing as the season has gone on.

In Alabama’s loss to Gonzaga, the Crimson Tide turned the basketball over 21 times, resulting in 23 points for the Bulldogs. Even against Jackson State, Alabama turned the ball over 17 times. Fortunately, the Crimson Tide has been able to offset most of its turnover woes with solid play on the defensive end of the court, particularly in the rebounding department. However, turnovers will ultimately cost Alabama multiple games if it doesn’t get the problem fixed before SEC play.

If you talk to the players, though, it seems that the Crimson Tide is very well aware of the issues at hand.

“I mean, we learned a lot of lessons,” graduate student forward Noah Gurley regarding nonconference play. “We learned lessons about playing on the road, we learned lessons about playing in overtime, we learned lessons about playing down, playing up. You know, conference play is crazy. Ain’t no telling what’s going to happen night-in, night-out.

“I feel like Coach Oats did a good job with our strength of schedule this nonconference in really preparing us so we know what it takes. We know if we guard on the defensive end, it’s going to be hard to keep up with us.”

From here, Alabama now takes a break for Christmas before returning to campus for a late 8 p.m. practice on Christmas Day. The four full days off will serve as not just a means for players to return home and see their families on the holiday, but also as a rest and recovery period following its grueling nonconference stretch.

On Dec. 28, the Crimson Tide will travel to Starkville, Miss. to open SEC play against Mississippi State. The Bulldogs started the season 11-0, but experienced its first loss this week against Drake. From there, Alabama will host Ole Miss before facing a tough three-game stretch against Kentucky, Arkansas and LSU, with the game against the Razorbacks being played on the road.

It’s not the easiest of starts to conference play for Alabama. That being said, the team is ready to address its problems and return to action despite the Christmas break just getting started.

When asked what he planned on doing over the holiday break, junior forward Nick Pringle said that he’ll be reviewing film from the nonconference schedule in order to prepare for SEC play.

“I would really just say just looking back at all the games that we played — the strength of schedule — and just learning and growing from that,” Pringle said on Tuesday. “We have a mature team. I think we’ll take the right approach from that and the rest is history. I mean, I feel like we have the team to beat. We’re really good as a team. I mean, just stacking days from here on out is all we’re really focused on.”

That doesn’t sound like a player that shares the same mentality of last year’s team.

See Also:

Grading Alabama Basketball’s Nonconference Record: Three-And-Out

All Things Bama Podcast: Bryce and Will’s Last Ride and The “Brandon Miller” Game

Uninspiring Efforts Cannot Become the New Normal for Alabama Basketball

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