Nate Oats takes a shot at Duke and the entire ACC with a revealing stat

Alabama basketball enters the SEC Tournament hoping to play its way up to a No. 1 seed. The Crimson Tide is currently 5th overall according to Joe Lunardi and most experts seem to believe that whichever of Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee advance the furthest in the SEC Tournament will earn the fourth and final No. 1 seed.

Auburn, Duke, and Houston appear to be locked into 1-seeds, leaving only one spot available. There’s been conversation about whether or not Duke or Auburn should receive the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, especially if the Tigers lose early this week in Nashville to compound their two-game losing streak to finish the regular season.

Of course, the Blue Devils have a head-to-head win over the Tigers from early December in Durham, but it’s pretty obvious that Auburn has the better resume with the SEC being a much better league than the SEC this season.

How much better? Well, during his media availability on Tuesday, Nate Oats revealed a compelling statistic:

To clarify: Alabama’s last seven games were all against AP Top 25 opponents. The Crimson Tide won three of those games, including a road win over No. 1 Auburn to close the regular season.

Oats is correct, too. Duke won 28 games, but only two wins (Auburn and Louisville) came against teams currently ranked in the AP Top 25. The Blue Devils lost to Kentucky and Kansas out of conference and then lost to one of the two other ranked ACC teams (Clemson) in conference play.

Alabama’s mentality heading into the SEC Tournament

John Calipari might have said that the SEC Tournament doesn’t matter, but don’t tell Oats and the Crimson Tide that. According to Mo Dioubate, Alabama has one goal in mind this week in Nashville:

Oats’ competitive plays well in these kind of environments. Two years ago Alabama had a No. 1 seed locked up heading into the SEC Tournament and they still played hard and won three games in three days to capture the SEC Tournament crown to go along with the regular season crown.

Oats has won this tournament twice at Alabama. It matters to him and this team and they will give it everything they’ve got to win it.