Alabama men’s basketball has been talking about this upcoming seven-game stretch since coach Nate Oats put the schedule together.
“It doesn’t start out easy on the road,” Oats said. “(Purdue has) maybe the best environment in the Big Ten from what I’ve heard.”
It doesn’t start easy, and it really never gets easy. The No. 2 Crimson Tide will face No. 13 Purdue on Friday (6 p.m. CT, Peacock) in West Lafayette, Indiana, the first of seven games in a stretch that is nothing short of difficult.
Alabama will face seven teams all ranked in the top 80 in KenPom’s efficiency rankings. Five of the seven rank in the top 26 in the country.
Only one game, against Creighton, is at Coleman Coliseum. All others are either on the road or at a neutral site.
"I told them this morning in video, the toughest competitors I’ve ever coached have been at their best in the toughest environments," Oats said Thursday.
Scheduling tough is nothing new for Oats. He has done it every year. But it’s rare Alabama has a stretch as daunting as this one.
Alabama will face Purdue on the road, Illinois in Birmingham then Houston and Rutgers in the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas with a potential third matchup that week. Then Alabama will travel to face North Carolina on the road before the home game against Creighton.
"We want to test ourselves against the best teams in the country and see where we’ve got weaknesses and get our weaknesses better before conference play," Oats said.
Alabama will certainly find out where those weak spots are. Another potential discovery: the Crimson Tide has an opportunity to show whether the preseason hype was warranted. If it really is a national-title contender.
Alabama doesn’t have to win every game during the gauntlet to prove that. But it should win most. If it doesn‘t, all hope of another Final Four isn’t lost. It just would mean Alabama has plenty of work to do to pursue its championship aspirations.
“It would be a hard stretch to win all seven with road games and neutrals and all that,” Oats said. “It would be great. I think we’re more than capable of winning all seven. But if we go 5-2, 6-1, whatever we go, 4-3, I don’t know, did we compete in every game? Did we give ourselves a chance to win? Did we execute? Did we get great shots?”
