Alabama $700 Million Key Player Has Been Ruled Out Of Season Due To…

The No. 24 Alabama Crimson Tide survived a scare in Athens on Wednesday to stay on top of the Southeastern Conference standings. The schedule doesn’t let up on Saturday as the Tide welcomes a dangerous Mississippi State Bulldogs team into Coleman Coliseum.

“We’ve got a big home game. Hopefully we’ll get the place sold out and rocking like it has been. I think our fans have been great – student section has been great. So, we’re in February now. It’s getting down to the stretch run if we’re going to try to win the league you’ve got to play well in February, that’s for sure. We need a good start to the month. Mississippi State’s – shoot they’re really good. There’s only three teams in our league that have beaten multiple top 10 teams, they’re one of them. They beat Tennessee when they were in the top 10, they beat Auburn when they were in the top ten,” said Oats on Friday.

“They’re capable of beating anybody on any given night because they’re so tough and physical and play defense at an elite level. They’ve got some big time scorers. I believe they’re the only team with two top 10 scorers in the SEC with Tolu [Smith] and [Josh] Hubbard both being in the top 10. Hubbard’s been playing really well for a freshman. Tolu is maybe the best big men in the league, one of the top couple bigs in the league. We’ve got our hands full. We’ve got to be better defensively. We’ve got to have a better start. We can’t plan on getting down 17-2. I think six of our eight SEC games we’ve been down at the first media timeout. We’ve been preaching the starts. We had a better one against LSU and it went obviously really south against Georgia. It’s going to be a tough game. Mississippi State’s well coached, play hard, tough, physical and they’ve got some big time scorers that we’ve got to do a good job on.”

Saturday is the second in the team’s home-and-home series as Alabama went into Starkville and won 82-74 in the middle of January.

The Bulldogs are 3-5 in Quad 1 games this season, boasting wins over Tennessee and Auburn during January. While Alabama has been particularly tough to beat inside Coleman Coliseum this season with a 10-1 record, a victory over the Crimson Tide will go a long way to solidifying State’s tournament aspirations.

ESPN’s bracket expert currently has the Bulldog’s listed as a No. 9 seed as they’re 14-7 but only one of their losses has been by double-digits.

It will be another pivotal day of conference action as the top challengers for the league title are all playing difficult games. Tennessee is on the road to Kentucky, Auburn is traveling to take on Ole Miss and South Carolina is going into Stegemen Coliseum to play Georgia.

An Alabama win on Saturday night, combined with favorable results around the league could see the Tide take a massive step towards defending its conference title.