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The Iron Bowl of Basketball is a likely Final Four preview — and sign of SEC basketball’s rise
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The biggest regular season basketball game ever played in the SEC will be played on Saturday at Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
No. 1 Auburn. No. 2 Alabama, if the AP Poll is your thing.
No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Auburn, if you prefer the Coaches’ Poll.
The 171st Iron Bowl of Basketball will be bigger than the games that preceded it. So much so, in fact, that the cheapest available ticket, per one after-market site, is going for $414. You could get into the Iron Bowl of football for $80 last autumn, depending on where you wanted to sit, if your Southern heart needed some football to gain some perspective.
By the way, despite being one of the most storied rivalries in college football, Alabama and Auburn have never met while ranked No. 1 and 2 on the football field. This dreamland of a game defies the imaginations of even those who live in Alabama, a state so blessed that once upon a time, stars fell on it.
Alabama and Auburn have plodded along in hoops for 231 combined seasons, reaching only 2 Final Fours between them. They’ve never even played with both teams ranked in the top 10, let alone ranked 1 and 2. No matter.
On Saturday, they’ll command the attention of the sporting universe, appointment television in a sport hardly anyone in their magnolia-laden patch of the universe tends to set their seasons by. The bitter, envious view might be that these Yellowhammer state fans don’t deserve this, football-obsessed folks that they are, interlopers in a sport long run by blue-blood programs and Northeastern media personalities.
But here’s the ultimate twist of the knife: The bitter, envious view couldn’t be more wrong.
The SEC is the best conference in college basketball this season.
This season’s version just might be the best basketball conference ever. The numbers suggest that’s the case. According to KenPom, the basketball analytical computer data tool used by coaches and the NCAA Selection Committee alike, the SEC’s conference “Net Rating” (measuring strength of the league top to bottom) through Wednesday’s games is 21.81. That’s the highest NET Rating in the KenPom era, edging the 1997 ACC, the current “best conference ever” belt holder with a 21.37 final NET Rating.
It is altogether fitting and proper, then, that the biggest game in SEC basketball history occurs in a season when the SEC is better than anyone in this sport has ever been.
It is even more fitting that Alabama and Auburn get the showcase game. As I wrote in December, a perfect storm of factors contributed to the SEC’s rise as a basketball power.
But Alabama and Auburn’s ascent as formidable basketball programs stands front and center in the SEC’s ascendancy to the summit of the sport.
That starts with Bruce Pearl.
When Pearl took the Auburn job in 2014, the SEC was coming off a 5-year run where the league averaged just 4 NCAA Tournament bids a season. Sure, Florida and Kentucky had been to the Final Four that spring and combined for 3 national championships between them this century. But outside of Rupp Arena and Gainesville, the league lacked a third premier program, despite spells of success at places like Tennessee (under Pearl), Vanderbilt (under Kevin Stallings), and LSU’s 2006 Final Four run under John Brady. Sustained success was fleeting, even at places with winning tradition and resources, like Alabama and Arkansas.
Pearl took the Auburn job believing he could change that, and he has, guiding Auburn to 200 wins, 5 NCAA Tournament appearances, 2 SEC regular-season championships, 2 SEC Tournament championships, and the 2019 Final Four in his 10 seasons.
“He’s one of the best program-builders in the sport, if not the best one when you consider the places he’s built winners,” Florida coach and former Pearl assistant Todd Golden told SDS earlier this season. “They play incredibly hard. They play fearlessly, without fear of failure, and selflessly. They prioritize development. They evaluate well, and they recruit not only good players but players with character who want to win, work hard, and can be coached hard.”
Legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith used to say the ultimate compliment for a team is that they “are difficult to play against and that a team remembers they played you.”
Auburn might not be the most aesthetically pleasing team to watch all the time, but you remember you played them. With their ball pressure, imposing length and physicality, and clinical flex offense, Auburn is one of the most difficult matchups in college basketball.
Pearl’s run of success at Auburn might include more trophies but for Alabama’s Nate Oats.
Currently in his 6th season in Tuscaloosa, Oats’ unique, analytical driven style of basketball has taken the sport by storm, dragging the SEC along for the ride. The Crimson Tide play a high-tempo, explosive brand of offensive basketball that emphasizes rim 2s and 3-pointers.
“Those aren’t just concepts of how they want to play, right?” Clemson coach Brad Brownell told the media last March, before the Tide and Tigers met in the Elite 8. “Those are non-negotiable principles of how they intend to play basketball. If you don’t play that way for them offensively, you sit.”
Those non-negotiable principles have produced points in bunches and made Alabama an attractive place to play for recruits, who have bought in to Oats’ NBA offensive sets and high-tempo style. They have also produced wins. Oats has won the SEC regular-season title and the SEC Tournament twice each in his first 5 seasons in Tuscaloosa and the Tide have advanced to 4 NCAA Tournaments, reaching the Final Four for the first time last March.
The rise of those programs isn’t lost on other SEC coaches as they consider the league’s climb as a whole.
“Ten, fifteen years ago, (then-Florida coach) Billy (Donovan) and I used to have go around and sell the league. We used to have to go tell people that our league was good, that it was hard to win on the road especially, and we would end those conversations hopeful they believed us. Mike (Slive) and later Greg (Sankey) wanted to change that,” now Arkansas coach John Calipari told SDS at SEC Media Day.
“But now look at it. The environments in our league, unbelievable. The big-time players. And it starts with coaching. It starts with the commitment to hiring people like Bruce at Auburn, or going and getting an innovator like Nate at Alabama, or a Hall of Famer like Rick (Barnes). That changes things. It has changed things.”
This year, the SEC should eclipse the Power 5 conference record for NCAA Tournament bids held in a season, currently held by the Big East, which had 11 members earn bids in 2011.
On Saturday, two of the programs most responsible for the SEC’s rise take center stage at Coleman Coliseum.
While Auburn and Alabama win different ways, the game isn’t necessarily a contrast of styles.
Both are magnificent offensively. Alabama ranks No. 2 in offensive efficiency, playing with frenetic pace (2nd in tempo) and putting relentless pressure on the glass, collecting 40% of their misses. Auburn is the lone offense in America more efficient than the Crimson Tide, and while it is more deliberate with tempo (131st), the Tigers also rely heavily on the 3-point shot (41% of their shots come from distance, to Alabama’s 35%) and crash the offensive glass with abandon, grabbing 36% of their own misses, ranking 24th in the country.
Both teams have supernova stars, with preseason SEC Player of the Year and Wooden finalist Mark Sears leading Alabama against Auburn’s Johni Broome, a fellow Wooden finalist and perhaps the frontrunner for the prestigious national player of the year award.
The difference in this game might be turnovers. Alabama has taken better care of the ball at home, but the Tide still turn the ball over at an eye opening rate, 17.7%, which ranks 210th in America. Auburn is more careful, turning the ball over at only a 13.4% rate. If Auburn takes care of the basketball, a turnover or 2 could be the difference in a narrow game where every possession is valuable.
In Coleman Coliseum, with the home crowd at their back, Alabama’s shotmaking and improved physicality, thanks to strong portal additions like Clifford Omoruyi, could make the difference. When the teams meet again at Neville Arena on March 8, the story might be different.
Saturday is but a prelude, albeit one filled with deserved pomp and circumstance. There will be at least 1 more Iron Bowl of Basketball. There may be as many as 3 more, including one in San Antonio at the Final Four.
That’s how good these coaches and teams are.
A No. 1 v. No. 2 meeting in February might just be the beginning.
Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
