re: Tide Hoops | 31-6 (16-2)

Speaking of winning the SEC Tourney, how do you feel about that for Bama?

7 of the last 10 NCAA Champions did not win their tourney, coining the phrase, “a good March loss.”

Here’s an interesting thing I found showing basically the past 24 years. It’s from last season, so you can add in Kansas, who won their tourney. Their last loss was a 10 pt loss at TCU on March 1st, which was their second 10 pt loss in a row (at Baylor).

Also a law of averages thing..takes six wins to win a NCAA title. Another three to win a SEC tourney title. That’s nine wins in a row. Most against very good competition.

I'd rather have the regular season championship than win the SEC Tournament. 9 straight is tough as hell. Not to mention the final regular season games.

Great attitude by that young man. He does good things on the court too.

Getting USC in the 2nd round would be tough, Lunardi's new bracket has us in the same region but going against the winner of Pitt/Mich St. Think I'd prefer that path.

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That’s pretty good considering there are way more teams that didn’t win their conference tournament than those that did. But yea, I won’t lose an ounce of sleep if we lose a thriller in the SEC Semis or Final

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As long as we make the SEC Semis we're fine, I read somewhere that only one team has ever not reached their conference semi-finals but made the Final Four. Texas Tech 2019 is the outlier.

This got me down a stat rabbit hole, here are some other numbers that could be indicative of a long postseason run:

The KenPom 20/40 rule:

Only the UConn teams that made those crazy runs and Baylor a couple of years ago (their defense actually moved into the qualifying section during tournament play) have won a title when being ranked outside the top 20 in offense or top 40 in defense.

Alabama this year? 20/5.

No team shooting worse than 33% from the 3pt line has ever won a championship.

Alabama? 34.8% And just for fun, we're holding opponents to just 26.1% (2nd in the country).

16 of the last 20 champions have had at least two players from that roster drafted, including quite a few in the top 20.

Alabama? Yeah, we're covered. Miller is probably top 5, Clowney will be a 1st whenever he declares, and you always have the chances of Griffen, Burnett, Bradley, etc., etc. The main takeaway is having talent and Alabama definitely is covered.

AP Preseason vs Current AP Poll

This is an upset alert stat, teams that weren't ranked initially but are ranked entering the tournament have a higher chance of being upset. Top teams stay near the top throughout the season. Alabama this year is obviously fine but a couple of years ago we entered the season unranked and were bounced in the Sweet 16, so this one stings a bit.

Balance and Pace


Last one. This is kind of a summary from the previous points. If you're too extreme on one side of the ball (ex. all offense, no defense) you're more than likely going to be bounced early. A great example would be Iowa last season. Now heavy defensive teams are less prone to be bounced initially because defense travels and doesn't slump but even with an efficient offense but low pace of play eventually catches up to you because of the lack of extra opportunities to score. Typically you want to be balanced on both sides of the court, an overreliance on one strength generally dooms your squad sooner rather than later.

If you're still reading, the main stat that doesn't do us any favors is TO%. However, we're averaging 5 fewer turnovers a game since the start of conference play so that went from a red flag to a caution.


That was a long but fun dive, we'll get some more updated numbers when we get to March.