{"id":84005,"date":"2025-02-23T10:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T16:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/nate-oats-compares-final-stretch-of-season-to-ncaa-tournament-run\/"},"modified":"2025-02-23T10:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T16:13:09","slug":"nate-oats-compares-final-stretch-of-season-to-ncaa-tournament-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/nate-oats-compares-final-stretch-of-season-to-ncaa-tournament-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Nate Oats compares final stretch of season to NCAA Tournament run"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alabama<\/a><\/strong>\u2018s final stretch of the regular season may prove to be the toughest after drawing top 25 matchups in each of their final seven games before postseason play.<\/p>\n

While they dropped the first two against No. 1 Auburn<\/a><\/strong> and No. 15 Missouri, the Crimson Tide bounced back in a major way on Saturday night, defeating No. 17 Kentucky<\/a><\/strong> 96-83 at home. Now, Alabama will take on No. 21 Mississippi State<\/a><\/strong>, No. 6 Tennessee<\/a><\/strong>, No. 2 Florida<\/a><\/strong> and then the rematch against Auburn \u2014 all consecutively, and all before making it to Nashville for the SEC Tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if anybody\u2019s played one, two and six in the three-game stretch anywhere in the country this year, let alone to close the year out,\u201d Alabama head coach Nate Oats said<\/a> after the Kentucky win. \u201cBut we needed this one tonight. And we\u2019re not going to focus on Tennessee until we get through with Mississippi State. And we\u2019re not going to focus on Florida until we\u2019re through with Tennessee. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to take it one at a time. The good thing with playing a schedule like this is you\u2019re not going to play three games in a row like that until you get to the Elite Eight, Final Four, championship game, if we\u2019re fortunate enough to get that far. So we\u2019re literally playing three teams that are going to be one or two seeds back to back to back, and Mississippi State\u2019s playing for a good seed in the NCAA Tournament, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, the Crimson Tide is tied for second place in the current SEC Standings with Florida. They both sit two games back from Auburn for the top spot in the conference. All three teams are ranked in the top four in the current AP Top 25 poll, as well.<\/p>\n

They sit atop the trend in the SEC, which has nine of its 16 members ranked in the top 25 this week. <\/p>\n

\u201cOutside of maybe the SEC Tournament, we\u2019re not going to see three teams like this until maybe an Elite Eight, Final Four, if we\u2019re fortunate enough to get there,\u201d Oats said. \u201cSo at least we\u2019ll have some experience playing very good teams back to back to back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first matchup in the gauntlet will be against the Bulldogs at home to round out the month of February. Tip-off is set for 9 p.m. ET and will air live on ESPN2. Alabama won the first matchup 88-84 in Starkville.<\/p>\n

The post Nate Oats compares final stretch of season to NCAA Tournament run<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alabama\u2018s final stretch of the regular season may prove to be the toughest after drawing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}