Alabama makes its case for an NCAA tournament bid

Welcome to the 2022 SEC Baseball Tournament Blog, your online home for the big news, behind-the-scenes notes and quotes and special moments that make this annual event at the Hoover (Ala.) Met the best college baseball tournament in the nation. Check back for updates each day throughout the week.

You have to appreciate Alabama coach Brad Bohannon. After his team battled for nine innings but finally fell to Florida 11-6, with the Crimson Tide firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble, he brought a unique combination of honesty and humor to his final postgame press conference in Hoover.

"I guess I'm supposed to tug on the front of my jersey right now and rattle off all the good things about our resume and conveniently leave out the not-so-good things," he said. "But obviously we're on the bubble, and we've done some really good things this year. We won a series from Texas A&M, we beat Arkansas three out of four, split four games with Georgia. Did a lot of good things."

Those good things included two SEC Tournament victories over Georgia and Arkansas, conference rivals whose spots in an NCAA Regional are a question of where, not if.

At a glance, Alabama's 31-27 overall record and its 12-17 SEC mark won't turn any heads, but consider what the Tide accomplished by going 2-2 this week. Given that this event is widely acknowledged as the best conference tournament in the country, testing teams on consecutive days against competition without peer in terms of depth, shouldn't the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee add extra weight to a team's performance in Hoover?

Bohannon was on board with that proposal.

"I absolutely feel that way," he said. "I think we're showing that we're trending up. You look at our last several games, we're playing really, really well. I think that's important going into next weekend."

His concern is that Alabama could be "punished" because the SEC isn't as dominant at the top as usual, even though he believes "the middle and the bottom are the strongest that they've ever been."

DIBaseball.com understands. Its Friday projections included both Alabama and Ole Miss among the last four teams in the NCAA Tournament.

There's nothing more the Tide can do on the field to make its case so the players will have Sunday off. If you need Bohannon a day ahead of Monday's 11 a.m. CT selection show, you'll find him on a boat with a lure in the water.