Alabama’s Tourney Hopes Likely Go Up In Smoke With Blowout Loss

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For 25 minutes, Alabama looked like an NCAA Tournament team.  The Crimson Tide were trailing Florida by just one point… in Gainesville… on Senior Night with 15 minutes to play in last night’s game.  Too bad they had to play those last 15 minutes.

Florida outscored Bama 39-13 over those final 15 to salt away the overall SEC championship, 78-51.  Coupled with a disappointing loss against Ole Miss on Saturday, last night’s blowout defeat likely snuffed out any hopes for an at-large bid that UA might have had.

“I didn’t feel like we handled adversity when it hit very well as a team tonight,” Anthony Grant said.  “It’s a lesson for us to learn.  As we move forward, hopefully our guys will see in terms of competing for championships, Florida does a good job of doing that.  Obviously we aspire to build our program to where we can compete for championships.”

The Tide will still host Georgia on Saturday, but at this point, it looks like Grant’s team will need to topple the Dawgs and then do some serious damage in the SEC Tournament next week to earn a trip to the Big Dance.