March Sadness: Alabama Basketball Concludes Season with 0-4 Drought
SAN DIEGO — Zero wins, four losses.
Those two numbers were Alabama basketball's final record for the month of March for the 2021-22 season. After a season that saw them 19-10 heading into the final full month of college basketball, the Crimson Tide simply could not acquire 20 wins.
While it seems like forever and a day ago at this point, Alabama started the season 8-1 with massive wins over quality opponents. With back-to-back wins over Gonzaga and Houston back in December — two of last year's Final Four teams — it seemed like the Crimson Tide had a date with destiny.
That was December, though. And as the saying goes, this is March.
Alabama's big wins in December might have been the season's high point for a team that seemed to peak far too early. However, it wasn't the end of the team's success. Wins against solid opponents like Baylor, LSU, Tennessee and Arkansas were also added to the Crimson Tide's NCAA Tournament resume. Despite inexplicable losses to inferior opponents that became a regular occurrence over the course of the season, Alabama still managed to pick up enough big wins to warrant a 6-seed in the tournament.
The wins did such a fine job of overshadowing the losses that even Notre Dame guard Cormac Ryan was surprised to learn that Alabama had finished March with an 0-4 record.
"To be honest, I don't think we knew that, I don't think anybody did," Ryan said after his team's 78-64 victory over Alabama that sealed its fate. "We were prepared to play a talented team. We knew it was going to be a dogfight. It was really about us. It was, could we execute on defense, execute on offense? And I think we did that.
"Coach [Mike] Brey has said, from the moment we got selected, once you're in that tournament, those numbers in front of the names, they go away and then it's just 5-on-5. And we played like that. We're not afraid of anybody and we're a hungry group."
Ryan's quote explains more than he and his team's surprise, though. It also touches on one particular intangible that, while his Fighting Irish possessed it in droves on Friday, is something that Alabama has seemingly lacked since the midway point of the season: hunger.
You can talk about the Crimson Tide's tournament resume all you want. You can talk about the top-tier talent that the team possessed. You can even talk about its big wins. But one thing that you can't discuss was this team's effort and hunger.
There were certainly points in the season where Alabama showed flashes of hunger, which translates into effort on the court. The Crimson Tide certainly had the talent on paper, but it relied too heavily on that talent rather than effort to earn wins in the final stretch of the season. While its 8-1 start to the year relied on effort at both ends of the court to get the job done, resulting in massive wins and an impressive start, the team quickly turned to rely solely on talent rather than effort, a recipe that ultimately spelled Alabama's demise.
It was that inconsistent effort that frustrated the players, head coach Nate Oats and, those who were most vocal about it this season, the fans.
"Overall, I'd say we had a successful season just a little disappointed, a little inconsistent, to be honest with you," Oats said following Friday's ousting at Viejas Arena by Notre Dame. "And the inconsistencies bothered us. All the fans were a little annoyed — the coaching staff, the players were annoyed. Some of our losses were really unacceptable. But we had some great wins.
"I told the guys, 'Let's try to remember the great moments of the season.' Some will be back. Some won't. The ones that are moving on, we've got some good memories of the year, just disappointing end to it."
A disappointing end indeed.
The NCAA Tournament selection committee certainly saw the talent and potential this Alabama team possessed, ranking them as the No. 21 team in their rankings and placing them as a 6-seed in the West Region. Of the six teams that made the tournament that Alabama beat during the regular season, five of them have advanced to the second round.
The Crimson Tide won't be advancing, though. A final disappointing period at the end of a long, rambling sentence that began as an exclamation. While there were certainly high points over the course of the season, the tournament run for Alabama basketball ended all too early.
It's too soon to know fully which members of this Crimson Tide team will be returning, but it's relatively safe to assume that a number of them will be moving on, whether it will be through graduating, transferring or heading to the NBA. Fortunately, Oats established a solid signing class to replace the lost talent. The journey at Alabama for those players departing is over, though, and what an ending it was.
Despite the rocky ending to the season, Alabama basketball still made history by appearing in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments for the first time since 2005-06. Just because the Crimson Tide didn't reach/surpass the Sweet 16 like it did in 2021 does not mean that this year was not a success. Many programs gauge success solely on whether a team made it to The Big Dance, and Alabama did just that.
The Crimson Tide might not have achieved the goals that fans had in mind heading into the year, but just because it had a lackluster final stretch does not mean that the whole season was a wash. Oats has the program pointed in the right direction, but this season simply wasn't the right time.
"We’ve got to do a better job keeping our guys engaged after big wins, with the effort they need to continue to win like that — even if our shots aren’t dropping or whatever it is,” Oats said. “You learn a lot every year as a coach. We’ve certainly learned a lot as coaches this year too."
While there is hope and optimism on the horizon, that doesn't help Alabama fans get over their team's 0-4 record to conclude this season. After all that this team achieved and was capable of achieving, a thrilling start ultimately ended in a whimpering conclusion. For now, the Crimson Tide faithful must continue to experience a feeling that seems to be historically entwined with the program:
This is March Sadness.
Gallery: Alabama Basketball at the 2022 NCAA Tournament
