Rylan Griffen Remembering Last Season's Loss to Embrace Alabama's Sweet 16 Matchup
The Crimson Tide lost in the Sweet 16 last season as the higher-seeded team. Now, the shoe is on the other foot.
LOS ANGELES — Alabama basketball is back in a familiar spot, yet different position.
The Crimson Tide has made it back to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row, and the third time in four seasons under head coach Nate Oats. But while being in the second weekend of the Big Dance isn't new anymore, being the underdog in the NCAA Tournament is.
Thursday's game between 4-seed Alabama and 1-seed North Carolina will be the first time the Crimson Tide has been the lower-seeded team in an NCAA Tournament game under Oats' leadership. Every single tournament game prior, all nine of them, Alabama was the higher seed, typically by more than a few seed lines.
What that also means, is every time Alabama has lost in the NCAA Tournament under Oats, it's been to a higher seed. That includes losing to 11-seed UCLA as a 2-seed in 2021, losing to 11-seed Notre Dame as a 6-seed in 2022, and last season losing to 5-seed San Diego State as a 1-seed.
While none of the current members of the Alabama team, or assistant coaches for that matter, were around for those losses in 2021 and 2022, there are three members of Alabama's current team that experienced the stunning loss to the Aztecs a year ago, ending the best season in program history prematurely.
Those three are Mark Sears, Nick Pringle and Rylan Griffen. In the locker room after beating 12-seed Grand Canyon on Sunday and advancing to the Sweet 16, Griffen spoke with reporters about being an underdog in the Sweet 16 this time around.
“Last year we were favored in a Sweet 16 matchup. This year we’re not going to be favored," Griffen said. "We know it can be done. We know you can upset teams like we got upset last year. We’re coming in with that mentality, like, we can beat anybody. Just like San Diego State probably felt like they can beat anybody and went on to the national championship after they beat us. We’re taking that into the Sweet 16, we just got to rest and get healthy."
Griffen said the team even embraced this underdog mentality throughout the first weekend of the tournament despite being the higher-seeded team in both games, since plenty of people were picking against Alabama due to its late-season slide.
“Not too many people had us going to the Sweet 16," Griffen said. "Some did, but a lot didn’t. I try not to look at that stuff, but you know, Coach Oats is going to let us know whoever picks against us just to motivate us.”
Griffen is right. A lot of talking head and analysts alike picked against Alabama to even make it out of the first weekend. Now as the second weekend approaches, those same college basketball personalities have already started penciling in the Tar Heels for the Elite Eight.
This will be a new version of a Nate Oats team in the NCAA Tournament that we haven't seen before, one that has the pressure off, and the chance to play with house money.
