Nate Oats added a wrinkle to his pregame speech to players since Alabama arrived in the NCAA tournament.
Mark Sears lights up when talking about it. Before hitting the court a one-minute highlight reel of the Crimson Tide haters — of which there are many — before each of the last four games.
“We love it,” Sears said bluntly.
And they might need more than a minute Saturday.
Practically nobody’s picking Alabama to unseat defending national champ UConn in the second NCAA semifinal set to tip off around 7:49 p.m. CT.
An 11.5-point underdog, Alabama’s hearing all about the Huskies and how they won’t compete in the program’s first Final Four game.
“We see what everybody’s saying about us in the media,” Sears said. ‘They had the easiest route to get here. They’re lucky.” We love it. We love to prove people wrong and feed off that energy.”
Sophomore Rylan Griffen was bothered by the way Charleston was picked to upset Alabama in the first round of the tournament.
“Because we are a 4-seed. They were a 13,” he said bluntly. “Those games are not set up for 13s to win and the fact they thought we were going to be the team … there’s always an upset but it wasn’t going to be us. Everybody thought it was. And I took that personal.”
Only one 4-seed fell in the opening round this year and that was Auburn to Yale. When that was noted in a Friday interview, Griffen took the opportunity to address the Tide’s biggest rival.
“I wish we could have faced Auburn again for sure,” he said. “I would have liked to have seen Auburn in the SEC tournament or in the Final Four. I think we would have really beat them. I think they got lucky at their house (a 99-81 Tiger win) but it is what it is. We can’t lie, there always is a 13 that wins but they thought we were the 4-seed and I didn’t really like that. So we had to come out and dominate them.”
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