Throughout the past couple of months, Alabama men’s basketball has played two games per week, one typically on Tuesday or Wednesday and the other being on Saturday. But Oats and company’s matchup with Arkansas isn’t until Saturday, meaning the Crimson Tide is on a bit of a bye week.

“It’s huge for a physical reset, we’ve got a lot of guys banged up,” Alabama head coach Oats said of the bye week at the Birmingham Tip Off Club on Monday. “We’ve adjusted our previous plan which was to go hard twice this week to stay on top and we’re only going to work hard once in practice and make sure it’s a lot more controlled than maybe a game would be.

“Mentally, we did an hour of skill and then took them out and did mini golf for the next hour and a half. I had a practice, it looked really hard when the guys looked at it this morning, and I knew I was [going to have to be] cutting it at halfway. They shouldn’t expect that ever again, but today we were trying to get them a little more mentally fresh, so I got some mini golf practice in with some of the players.”

Oats said that Alabama forward Grant Nelson, who is coming off of a stellar outing in the Crimson Tide’s dominant home win over Georgia, came out victorious in the Alabama mini golf match as he beat the head coach by one stroke. Oats didn’t fully tally the score for the rest of the team but doesn’t believe “anybody else on the team could’ve beaten [him or Nelson].”

Alabama may have gotten a boost in the rankings on Monday morning with the new No. 3 spot in the AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll, but the Crimson Tide’s prize is that even more targets are on Oats’ back.

Alabama’s final seven games of the regular season are all against ranked opponents in the SEC––this year’s toughest conference in college basketball. However, the Tide has two games before this absurd gauntlet of stretch against two unranked opponents with the first being against Arkansas on the road.

Alabama’s Final Nine Games:

Date, Opponent, SEC Record, Placement in Conference Standings

As seen above, despite the nationwide ranking, the SEC is a very challenging playing field where nearly every team in the conference is prone to falling to another member on any given night. For example, Alabama narrowly defeated Kentucky and Mississippi State, who are both ranked in the AP Top 25 but are also in the bottom half of the conference standings, and the Crimson Tide will face the Wildcats and Bulldogs once again.

Rest is needed to face the daunting seven-game slate and now is a great time for some time off. As Oats said, the Crimson Tide is a bit banged up and time is the greatest healer. Impactful freshmen Labaron Philon (ankle) and Derrion Reid (lower-body) have both dealt with injuries lately that have limited each of them in not only recent practices but games as well.

Alabama is currently projected to be a top-seed in the NCAA Tournament and will need momentum for the rest of the regular season and the SEC Tournament for the Crimson Tide to have a shot at keeping that status as one of college basketball’s four best teams. Oats and company’s five-game win streak only trails Auburn for the best active mark in the conference, and while it will be practically insurmountable to go undefeated in this stretch, winning a heavy majority of these games will go a long way.

Nevertheless, with all of these obstacles on the table, Oats stressed that the Tide isn’t eyeing the gauntlet right now as not overlooking Arkansas (13-8, 2-6 SEC) is the top priority. The Razorbacks took down then-No. 12 Kentucky 89-79 on the road on Saturday evening. It was head coach John Calipari’s first game back in Lexington since taking the Arkansas job, and after walking into a Rupp Arena filled with boos, the longtime Wildcats head coach had the last laugh.

“The fact that Arkansas beat Kentucky and their record hadn’t been as good, we as coaches know they are a lot better than what their record showed,” Oats said. “I think the players, if they didn’t know it before they better know it now after [Arkansas] just went in and beat Kentucky.”

The Razorbacks lead the all-time series 36-33 against the Crimson Tide with the first matchup occurring on Jan. 21, 1948. Alabama is 7-21 all-time on the road against Arkansas but has won the last four matchups. Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats is 3-5 against Calipari since being hired at Alabama in 2019.