This is an opinion column.
Days like this are what it’s all about.
Waking up with an elevated heart rate that only edges higher as the sun rises and falls.
Conversations are difficult -- the whole day like something from a Scorsese film. Basic human interaction suffers and the clock ticks toward potential history.
For an Alabama basketball fanbase almost emotionally callused by an unprecedented 1.5 decades of football supremacy, Saturday’s step to the threshold brings a different energy. The sight of unplowed snow on the horizon presents a new adrenaline ride -- a different flavor of dopamine.
The Crimson Tide sits 40 minutes from its first Final Four in program history, stepping to this moment 20 years after its last and only such opportunity. Only Clemson -- an upstart in its own right with zero Final Fours trips -- stands between the Crimson Tide and the previously unthinkable.
It’s madness.
And this state’s about to need a straightjacket.
But days like March 30, 2024 are most significant in context of the bigger picture.
They matter because of days like March 13, 2014 -- one very long decade ago. That day, Alabama took a listless 68-56 beating from LSU in the SEC tournament to end the season with a 13-19 record. The program’s first losing record in 14 years wasn’t bad enough for the coaching change that came a year later.
Best case in that era was bubble surfing and a cup of coffee in the dance.
It was bleak.
The NIT logo was a regular feature on the Coleman Coliseum floor back then. That three-letter sticker was present March 20, 2019 when four-letter salutations ushered Avery Johnson off the floor for the final time. An 80-79 NIT loss to Norfolk State was a breaking point for a frustrated fanbase who saw hope brewing at rival Auburn while its historically proud program was filling diapers on a slow crawl to mediocrity.
The March 25, 2004 optimism perhaps never felt further from the reality of Avery Johnson getting showered with boos just days before his departure was announced. It was that day Mark Gottfried’s crew broke the program’s long Sweet 16 losing streak, sending defending champ Syracuse home to make its first Elite Eight.
That group was a real upstart as it entered the tournament with a 17-12 record and a No. 8 seed. A 65-64 opening-round survival of Southern Illinois preceded a 70-67 upset of No. 1 seed Stanford. After beating Syracuse, eventual national champ UConn ended the fairy tale rather decisively, 87-71.
That game was played in downtown Phoenix. You might see where I’m going with this.
Two decades later, UConn is the No. 1 overall seed with Alabama playing for a spot in the Final Four being played in suburban Phoenix. To tie it all together, that national semifinal promised land is the same stadium where Alabama’s football team beat Clemson for the 2015 national title in a restatement of its dominance after questions emerged.
Nate Oats was a math teacher and coach at Romulus High School in suburban Detroit the last and only time Alabama was in this spot. His rise to fame began when Bobby Hurley hired him as an assistant coach at the University at Buffalo in 2015. He is, of course, the brother of UConn coach Danny Hurley in another bit of circuital trivia.
Oats saw the temperature rise just weeks after landing in Tuscaloosa when rival Auburn made its unlikely run to become the state’s first Final Four participant. That 2019 Tiger march to within seconds of the national title game stuck with Oats.
“I know we’re big rivals, but they’ve set the bar pretty high now with going to the Final Four,” Oats said a few months later at the 2019 SEC spring meetings. “We have something to shoot at. We need to raise our game.”
They did.
Alabama made three Sweet 16s in four seasons before breaking through Thursday to make another rare Elite Eight appearance. This Crimson Tide team did what 2021 and 2023 SEC championship teams managed, plowed deeper than last year’s No. 1 overall seed led by lottery pick Brandon Miller could.
All the Crimson Tide needs to do is beat Clemson, another perceived football school that’s been through its own share of the basketball wilderness. These Tigers hadn’t been to an Elite Eight in 44 years and endured far more NIT-caliber seasons than Alabama.
So here both stand, a long Saturday from one taking a step beyond precedence.
It’ll be one anxious day in the asylum on the second-to-last day of a maddening March to remember in football country.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.