To say that Alabama basketball hasnât taken a step forward under Avery Johnson would be, well, fake news.
As Johnson mentioned on Mondayâs SEC coaches teleconference, the Crimson Tide were the No. 10 seed entering last yearâs SEC tournament. This year, Alabama secured a bye and will enter as the No. 5 seed.
Iâm not great at math, but that looks like progress.
While most people will point to next year as the year that Johnsonâs team could take a massive step forward on the national level, finishing fifth in the SEC isnât all that bad. Alabama won double-digit SEC games for the first time since the 2013-14 season.
However, regular season success against potential opponents is no longer on the mind of Johnson and company.
âIt really doesnât matter what kind of success you had against them in the regular season,â Johnson said. âEveryone is 0-0 going into the tournament.â
âWeâre never gonna be overconfident and take any team for granted. We donât have that type of team. We have to prepare well and be in the right mindset to execute to have success.â
The Crimson Tide will play either No. 12 Mississippi State or No. 13 LSU in Thursdayâs second round game. They swept both teams during the regular season, and will attempt to beat one for a third time to score a rematch with South Carolina on Friday.
The two teams played perhaps the game of the year in the conference back in early February, with Alabama winning 90-86 in a four overtime thriller in Columbia.
But to make a deep run this week in Nashville, Johnson knows that his team will need to keep striving for balance.
âWe just have to do a good job of taking care of the ball, rebounding the ball, and trying to become a better balanced team which weâve been searching for all year,â he said. âWeâve put together some good halves, but we havenât put together as many good complete games as I wanted to.
The most obvious case of Alabamaâs inability to put two full halves together on a regular basis this year came in the regular season finale at Tennessee. The Crimson Tide got out to a hot start and led for much of the game, but the Vols were able to erase a 16-point deficit to earn a much-needed win.
Luckily for Alabama, the SEC tournament allows it to start from scratch and forget the pain of another head-scratching half.
âWeâve already hit the reset button,â Johnson said. âWeâve shown throughout the course of conference play that we can play some really good halves on defense and some really good halves on offense, then weâll have an outlier performance where we play well on both ends of the floor for 30-34 minutes of a game.
âWe know weâre capable, we just gotta make sure we play to our strengths and understand the cycles of a game. We feel weâre as competitive on the defensive end of the court as any team in our conference, itâs just a matter of us generating enough offense to be competitive.â
One player that has found a lot of success this season on the offensive end of the floor is freshman Braxton Key, who was named to the leagueâs All-Freshman Team on Tuesday. Key led the team in scoring with 12.3 points per game and contributed 5.7 rebounds per game.
Key and fellow freshman Dazon Ingram (10.3 PPG) will need to be at their best offensively this week for the Crimson Tide to win multiple games.
And despite being on the side of the bracket with Kentucky and South Carolina, Alabama can certainly win several games due to the unpredictable nature of the SEC this season.
Thatâs a theme that Johnson echoed when asked about how wide open this tournament is heading into the two first round games on Wednesday.
âNobody went undefeated in our conference, right?â he said. âSo we arenât looking at a team thatâs 34-0 or anything like that.â
âI wouldnât be surprised if somebody wins the SEC tournament thatâs not in the top four in terms of seeding because weâve had a lot of teams win games on the road. It makes for an exciting SEC season, and weâre gonna have some great games.â
