The Alabama men’s basketball team has famously never reached the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament and maybe this will be the year that the Crimson Tide breaks through.

The history of Alabama basketball has been painted by NCAA Tournament disappointments — 23 appearances all-time and only one trip to the Elite Eight — and this week represents the first time since 2002 for the Crimson Tide to be ranked No.1 in the AP Poll. Alabama also moved up to No.1 in the Coaches Poll for the first time in school history.

Big tests like the victory at Auburn last Saturday and Wednesday’s game at No.10 Tennessee (6 p.m.) can help solidify Alabama as the No.1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. The top two No.1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament can pick their preferred destinations for the NCAA Tournament, and Birmingham’s Legacy Arena is hosting first- and second-round games.

I’m hoping for the best for Alabama, but nothing is guaranteed. The NCAA Tournament is an untamable beast, and sometimes it eats the best teams, and the best players, for breakfast.

And then sometimes the best teams get completely blindsided by unfortunate circumstances along the way to the Big Dance.

RELATED: Alabama starter injured ahead of trip to No.10 Tennessee

A recent conversation with a former Alabama player put things into perspective for me, and that’s why I’m celebrating every success for No.1 Alabama (22-3, 12-0 in the SEC) in the proper context.

This Alabama team is the first in school history to start a season 22-3, but another group went undefeated in conference play. It was legendary Birmingham News sports editor Benny Marshall who nicknamed the 1955-56 Alabama basketball team the “Rocket 8s” after the smooth-riding and powerful Oldsmobile V-8 engines. The Rocket 8s went 14-0 against SEC opponents, and became the first team to score over 100 points against a Kentucky team coached by Adolph Rupp.

Those Rocket 8s remain Alabama legends, but the story of that team is a sad one, too.

I recently chatted with Alabama great Jack Kubiszyn, who was the Rockets 8s’ sixth man, and, I have to be honest, he’s still pretty bitter about what happened so long ago. That team could have competed against Bill Russell’s San Francisco, but, according to Kubiszyn, Alabama declined its bid to the NCAA Tournament after the NCAA ruled the team’s starters ineligible for postseason competition.

“What they did was let Kentucky go in our place,” Kubiszyn said. “It was a bad deal. It was the NCAA. Those people are crazy. They got no common sense, but that’s just my personal opinion. With the NCAA, it’s consistent stupidity.”

What a king. Kubiszyn is 86 years old, but the man can still dunk on the NCAA.

A two-sport star at Alabama, Kubiszyn went on to play Major League Baseball with the Cleveland Indians. For all of his success in life, though, he’s still mad about 1956. Can’t blame him. How good was that team? Kentucky was ranked No.2 in the preseason, but Alabama smoked the Wildcats 101-77 at Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery.

Russell was the national player of the year in 1956 after averaging 20.6 points and 21.0 rebounds per game. Alabama’s Jerry Harper, star of the Rocket 8s, averaged 23.2 points and 21.5 rebounds per game.

And Alabama wouldn’t play in an NCAA Tournament until 1975.

The reason Alabama was robbed of a trip to the 1956 NCAA Tournament? A ridiculous rule that long ago went away. The best players of that Rocket 8s team all played as freshmen in 1953, so their NCAA eligibility expired in 1956. Back then, players could only play three years of varsity athletics.

These days, the best college basketball players only play one season, and then they’re off to the NBA. Alabama has one in 6-9 shooting guard Brandon Miller, who is averaging 18.8 points per game for the season. Guess who holds the single-season scoring record, though. It’s King Kubiszyn, who averaged 24.6 points per game as a junior in 1957.

What would that record be if he played with the three-point arc?

“Probably six or eight points higher,” he said, and he was being stone-cold serious.

Kubiszyn was named an All-American in 1958. He was a 5-11 shooting guard, and his story is incredible. He grew up playing basketball at the Boys Club in Buffalo, New York. He was the first in his family to attend college and Kubiszyn says his father dropped out of school in the fourth grade to help his family pay the bills. Different times.

He credits the “Blessed Mother” for leading him to Alabama. Alabama basketball coach Johnny Dee offered Kubiszyn a scholarship without watching him play, and the car ride from Buffalo to Tuscaloosa took 32 hours.

“And we didn’t stop,” he said.

Kubiszyn would get along well with Alabama coach Nate Oats and these Crimson Tide players. I’m hoping they can all meet at some point before the conference tournament in Nashville. Kubiszyn still lives in Tuscaloosa. He was a city councilman in the 1990s.

Oats said this week that the new No.1 ranking in the AP Poll means nothing, but that’s not exactly true. Oats just wants to keep his team sharp, and that’s the right message, but for the purposes of program building, being No.1 during the regular season is a major accomplishment and can be an important building block for sustained success.

It was the same with Auburn in 2022 when the Tigers broke through as the No.1 team in the AP Top 25. Auburn went out in the second round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, but that didn’t diminish the legacy of that beautiful regular season with Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler. One well-heeled fan was so inspired by the team that he donated enough money to Auburn to have his name put on the arena.

No.1 in the regular season doesn’t mean everything, but it certainly means something. It will mean a lot more if it leads to Alabama getting a new basketball arena.

The constant expectation for top-ranked success of the football team at Alabama inevitably obscures the significant gains of the basketball team, but I’m going to celebrate these remaining few weeks of the regular season with Alabama’s Miller in their proper context. He plays the game with joy, and that spirit has made this the best Alabama basketball team in school history.

In some ways, I feel like this Alabama team is playing for those Rocket 8s. Like a classic American engine, Miller’s game rides pretty smooth, too.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama: A season of hope and the making of Nick Saban’s ‘ultimate team’”. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.