Happy Monday, everyone. The Alabama women’s basketball team hosts a very average Texas A&M squad tonight. A win would put them at 8-4 and guarantee at least a .500 finish in a very difficult league. Tip-off is at 7pm on SEC Network. Softball had a terrible weekend in Clearwater, and the baseball team swept Bradley to open their season.
Of course, the big story of the weekend was the Alabama vs Auburn basketball game that didn’t go the Tide’s way. Alabama’s shooting was the culprit, but Nate Oats believes that shot selection contributed heavily to that number.
“[Sears’] finishing at the rim wasn’t great,” Oats said. “He was 33 percent at the rim…I thought he got fouled on one, but refs aren’t gonna be perfect, and we sure weren’t perfect as coaches or players. The whole team was 48 percent at the rim.
“I mean, you go down the list, Dioubate had a miss at the rim he’s got to make. Labaron [Philon] missed some at-the-rims he’s got to make. Jarin missed the one he’s got to put two hands on and dunk the ball. Grant [Nelson] missed plenty of shots. Grant was 5 for 10 at the rim. Mo Dioubate 4-of-9, Grant 5-of-10, Sears 2-of-6, Holloway 1-of-3. We missed a lot of reads. I mean, so we gotta be better. We gotta move the ball better. We gotta be more unselfish moving forward.”
“Starts with our ball movement,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said of his team’s offensive struggles. “The reason why you shoot 48 percent at the rim is you don’t move the ball. … It was just too many bad shots. We didn’t get good enough shots on offense.”
The second half was closer to what fans have been accustomed to: 47-33-81 shooting splits that helped the Tide battle back from the double-digit deficit. But Alabama was never able to get over the hump and take the lead.
As good as this team has been this season, there are times where the offense gets downright frustrating as everyone seems to want to play one-on-one. By this point of the season you’d hope that ball movement would be much improved, but there is still room for growth. If the loss on Saturday gets them functioning better as a unit, then it would be well worth it.
Surprise! The playoff is almost assuredly expanding in 2026. The interesting thing is that the committee is going to lose most of its power, as nearly the whole field will be made up of autobids.
Leaders in each conference have spent the last several weeks evolving a format idea — multiple automatic qualifiers per league — into a more realistic proposal. The 14- or 16-team model would grant four automatic qualifiers each to the SEC and Big Ten; two each to the ACC and Big 12; and one to the highest-ranked Group of Five champion. It includes one or three at-large spots, one of those intended for Notre Dame if it finishes ranked inside the top 14 — a guarantee specifically designated for the Irish that is part of the CFP memorandum.
Officials describe the 14-team format as a 4-4-2-2-1+1 model in which the top two seeds receive first-round byes. There would be no byes in a 16-team structure. In either, the CFP selection committee’s role is greatly diminished. The committee, its future — as the memorandum stipulates — also controlled by the SEC and Big Ten, would presumably seed 1 through 14 or 16 based directly on its top-25 rankings.
Any move toward guaranteed spots for the leagues’ top teams, however, also would need to come with a reimagination of how conference championship games work. One possibility is using championship weekend as a CFP play-in weekend. In addition to the Big Ten and SEC championships, there would be play-in games between the third and sixth seeds and fourth and fifth seeds and perhaps throughout the leagues’ entire lineup.
The sorting of matchups by record is a similar concept to what the Big Ten tried to institute at the end of the COVID-19-altered 2020 season. The idea was floated late last year, each school has had a chance to think about it, and the New Orleans meeting will offer a chance for everyone to exchange notes and thoughts.
Other iterations of this concept are likely to come up. How about four play-in games matching the top eight teams in the conference, essentially turning championship weekend into the first weekend of the CFP, with a bunch of win-or-go-home games instead of title games between teams only playing for seeding?
That last proposal is absurd. You want to expose the team who finished first in the current SEC to be at risk for missing the playoff with an upset loss to the 8-seed? Sure, it’s unlikely to happen very often, but there is no way a commissioner signs off on that. More games means more TV money though, so perhaps I’m being naive.
While I hate the concept of autobids, at least this takes away the “bid stealers” from other leagues. As I said this past season, SMU is the only team that Clemson should have been able to knock out of the playoff.
If they do go to 16 teams then the committee’s rankings will still determine three at large teams, otherwise it will be only one.
That’s about it for today. Have a great week.
Roll Tide.
