The University of Alabama has long been known as a football school, but with Nick Saban's retirement and now a Final Four appearance by Nate Oats and the Alabama basketball program, that may be changing.
In a game fit for the College Football Playoff, Alabama defeated Clemson on Saturday in the Elite Eight of the men's basketball NCAA tournament. The Crimson Tide won 89-82 to clinch a Final Four berth, the first in Alabama basketball program history. The win also gave Alabama athletics two rare distinctions.
One is that Alabama is now one of only two schools to play in both the College Football Playoff and Final Four in the same calendar year, joining Michigan State, which lost in the semifinal of both back in 2015. The other is that Alabama joins Oklahoma as the only two schools to play in both the Final Four and CFP in the same academic year. The Sooners achieved the feat during the 2015-16 academic year; the football team lost in the CFP semifinal on December 31, 2015, before the basketball team lost in the national semifinal in April 2016.
Alabama: A basketball school?
In Saban's final season as Alabama head football coach, the Tide earned the No. 4 seed in the CFP, matching up with Michigan in the Rose Bowl semifinal. Alabama could not manage to get by Michigan, the eventual national champions, and lost 27-20 in overtime.
Oats and the Alabama basketball team will certainly hope to have a better result in Phoenix in the Final Four, where the Tide will meet the defending national champions UConn. The Huskies have throttled each of their opponents in the tournament so far; UConn has won every game by at least 17 points and punched its proverbial ticket to Phoenix with a 77-52 win over Illinois in a game in which the Illini were on the unfortunate end of a 30-0 run.
To get to this point, Alabama had multiple tough tests. The Crimson Tide withstood the offensive firepower of the College of Charleston before surviving a close call against Grand Canyon, against which Alabama had to go on a late 12-3 run to overcome a deficit and advance to the Sweet Sixteen. In Los Angeles, Grant Nelson's three-point play with 38 seconds left put Alabama ahead and launched the Tide to only the second Elite Eight appearance in school history.
Oats, who is in his fifth season as Alabama's head basketball coach, has orchestrated a complete overhaul of a program that had not reached the Sweet Sixteen or Elite Eight in 15 years at the time of his hiring. In fact, Alabama had only appeared in the NCAA tournament twice from 2007 to 2019 and had not won an SEC regular season championship since 2002 and an SEC tournament title since 1991.
Under Oats, Alabama has made the NCAA tournament every year it has been able to (the 2020 NCAA tournament was canceled due to COVID-19), only failed to reach the Sweet Sixteen one time in the last four years, won two SEC regular season and tournament titles, and now has led the Crimson Tide to the Final Four.
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