Even after top-ranked Alabama lost Wednesday night to Tennessee, the Tide still controls its own destiny to win an SEC regular-season title and earn the No. 1 seed in the SEC tournament next month.

If Alabama wins its five remaining SEC games, it will accomplish both of those goals for the second time in the past three seasons.

But the Tide’s defeat in Knoxville means another team now controls its own destiny to win the SEC, too.

If Texas A&M wins its remaining five games, including its March 4 finale against Alabama in College Station, then the Aggies would win the SEC and head to Nashville as the No. 1 seed.

Alabama currently leads the conference with a 12-1 record, the second-best SEC start in program history. Texas A&M sits in second place at 11-2. If both teams win their next four games and the Aggies beat the Tide in the finale, then both would finish 16-2 and Texas A&M would own the tiebreaker.

Tennessee, alone in third place at 9-4, also owns a tiebreaker over Alabama but would need the Tide to lose three of its final five games for that to come into play.

Alabama hosts Georgia at 5 p.m. CT Saturday in Coleman Coliseum as it tries to recover from its loss to Tennessee while also holding onto first place in the SEC.

“They know that A&M is only a game behind,” coach Nate Oats said Friday of his players. “We only get A&M once. It’s on the road. We’ve got, definitely, some pressure on us, these last five games, as far as trying to win the SEC regular season goes.”

Alabama won the SEC regular-season title in 2020-21 for the first time since the 2001-02 season, and Oats has mentioned periodically throughout this season how winning it again is a stated goal of his team.

A regular-season title is largely a point of pride, as the top four seeds in the conference receive double byes in the SEC tournament and a tournament title ultimately determines automatic bids to the NCAA tournament. But for an Alabama team that won its first 11 SEC games this season by an average of 21 points, letting the conference slip away to Texas A&M would be a psychological setback.

Texas A&M will need to keep pace, too. The Aggies play three of their next four games on the road at Missouri, Mississippi State and Ole Miss, and also must host Tennessee on Tuesday.

Alabama hosts Georgia (6-7) then travels to South Carolina (2-11) before two more home games against Arkansas (6-7) and Auburn (8-5).

“We just talk about getting better, like, where do we need to improve from the Tennessee game? How can we get better?” Oats asked Friday. “I think we’ve answered every loss so far this year pretty well. Let’s not turn Wednesday’s loss into a loss Saturday. Let’s bounce back. I thought the guys had pretty good attitudes the last two days [of practice].

“But yeah, if you’re looking for extra stuff to get motivated, that [SEC title race against Texas A&M] might be one. I don’t think we need anything extra to get motivated, to be honest with you, though.”

Although Alabama and Texas A&M are the two top teams in the SEC standings, they are in significantly different positions for the NCAA tournament. Alabama returned Friday as ESPN’s projected No. 1 overall seed after Purdue lost Thursday to Maryland. Texas A&M is predicted as a No. 9 seed by ESPN, starting to move away from the bubble it had occupied for weeks.

That is mostly a result of the stark difference in the two teams’ non-conference schedules and performance. Alabama played the nation’s ninth-hardest non-conference schedule by the NCAA’s NET metric, beating the current No. 1 in NET, Houston, on the road.

Texas A&M’s non-conference strength of schedule ranked 255th in NET, and the Aggies lost to Murray State, Colorado, Boise State and Wofford to weaken their résumé for the NCAA tournament.

But over their past 15 games, both Alabama and Texas A&M have won 13 each.

Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.