Alabama Basketball's 85-48 Win Over Mississippi State Proves That It Can "Play at Any Time"

Prior to Friday's victory, the Crimson Tide was 1-2 in games with 11 a.m. tipoffs this season

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — If there was one point that Alabama basketball wanted to make in its 85-48 demolition of Mississippi State in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals on Friday, it was that the team can win regardless of the time of day its tipoff is scheduled.

“I thought our team came out well-prepared,” senior guard John Petty Jr. said after the game. “There was a lot of questions about us coming out in these early games — in previous, we didn’t really do too good but I feel like our guys did a great job getting up this morning [and] getting real locked in and it showed out there on the court. Great win by our guys, everybody contributed so good win.”

Senior wing Herb Jones echoed Petty's sentiments that any questions surrounding Alabama's ability to play early games were answered on Friday inside Bridgestone Arena.

“A lot of people had doubts about us starting games with the 11 o’clock tip and today I feel like we came out and proved that we can play at any time," Jones said.

Prior to Friday's win, the Crimson Tide was 1-2 in games with an 11 a.m. tip this season. The early morning losses had garnered the attention of both fans and critics alike, causing some discussion over the last week of whether or not the SEC regular-season champions would be able to perform well even after finishing the season with an overall record of 21-6.

Alabama's first 11 a.m. game was a narrow 95-90 victory at Auburn back on Jan. 9. Three weeks later on Jan. 30, the Crimson Tide lost in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge at Oklahoma, 66-61. Finally, one week later on Feb. 6, Alabama lost 68-65 at Missouri.

In order to avoid another early-morning loss and a premature exit to the SEC Tournament, Oats said he woke up his team earlier than normal to ensure a jump-start to their day.

"We told them they got to change something up," Oats said. "We tried to get them up a tad earlier, see if they could get going a little bit before breakfast. I thought the walk-through was good."

Getting solid performances in early starts is something that Alabama has to perfect this weekend. On Saturday, the Crimson Tide will lead off the day with a noon tipoff in the SEC Tournament semifinals and then again on Sunday if the team advances to the championship game.

Oats said that his players took offense to the questions from fans and media members skeptical of the team's ability to perform in the morning.

"I'm glad they took offense to it because we've got another [noon] one tomorrow, then if you throw out the Daylight Savings Time, you've got another 11 one the following day," Oats said. "It will say noon on the clock, but it's really the exact same time because of Daylight Savings Time. We've got three days in a row, 11, [noon], [noon].

"We're going to have to play well in all of them if we're fortunate enough to win tomorrow to get to Sunday."

For now, Alabama will have to focus solely on Saturday's semifinals where it will face No. 4 Tennessee. While Alabama is the No. 1 seed in the tournament thanks to its regular-season SEC title, the Crimson Tide will need to remain focused on what is sure to be a difficult matchup.

Oats fully intends on repeating the early start to the day on Saturday in order to help give his team an edge.

“I think we answered the questions about whether our guys can come out ready to play an 11 o’clock tip,” Oats said. “I told them whatever they did do to get ready for that one we’ll try to repeat tomorrow.”