Compare two scenes outside the Alabama men’s basketball locker room.

The first, exiting halftime, featured the Crimson Tide trailing Auburn by seven at home. Players walked into the tunnel with stern, focused looks on their faces. When coach Nate Oats followed them, a few fans behind a partition cheered and shouted words of encouragement. Oats turned his head to the right, registered someone was talking to him, but quickly turned his eyes back toward the court, never breaking stride. Minutes later, Oats would be screaming along with the Coleman Coliseum faithful as Alabama rallied.

Which leads to the next moment. After an electric 90-85 overtime victory and net-cutting ceremony, a procession of smiling faces and Southeastern Conference championship merchandise made their way to the locker room. Players hugged parents and friends while wearing shirts featuring a cartoon drawing of the roster. The deficit shrunk, then ballooned back to 17 at one point in the second half. But according to Oats, a crucial team huddle sparked a comeback and delivered an SEC regular-season crown.

The keys to Alabama’s 16th combined conference championship were a mixture of improved decision-making by the Tide, foul trouble for the Tigers and a swing in “blue-collar points.” Echoing the team’s season-long creed of matching a deep, talented roster with hustle plays freshman star Brandon Miller went three-for-12 from the field, but still made 11 free throws. He finished tied for the team lead with 17 total points.

Alabama turned the ball over nine times in the first half. The offense was sluggish, as it was versus Arkansas, shooting 39.3% overall and three-for-13 from deep. Auburn didn’t create many open looks but was executing better than Alabama. One drive led to an alley-oop pass from Jahvon Quinerely to Noah Clowney, for example, which was followed by Mark Sears bouncing a pass off the base of the rim.

“We were down 10 in the blue-collar points at halftime,” Oats said, “we finished the game, we chart ours and team totals for Auburn, we finished the game up 15 so we flipped the whole thing by 25 blue-collar points after halftime.”

The under-eight-minute timeout was a longer break than usual because the referees had to review a skirmish between the teams. Two Alabama players and an assistant coach were ejected and an already loud atmosphere rose a few octaves as the Tide mounted a rally.

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Oats was partially concerned about losing the momentum of Alabama’s eventual 14-0 run, but he stressed to players the importance of getting a few stops as play resumed. Another part of the referee’s decision helped. Johni Broome, the Tigers’ 6-foot-10 sophomore forward, was ruled to have committed his fifth foul in the altercation and was disqualified.

The size advantage on the inside turned in the Tide’s favor. While the outside shots weren’t falling consistently — Alabama had another below-average showing from 3-point range with eight makes in 31 tries — the home side mustered 42 points in the paint to Auburn’s 22. It also shortened the rebounding gap.

A back-and-forth half saw each team have one possession in the final minute to take the lead, but neither could generate a clean look. Miller’s effort, along with Quinerly’s three steals and Jaden Bradley’s six points in overtime despite not starting the second half, gave Oats his second outright regular-season title since being hired in 2019.

“We need to play a little harder,” Oats recalled of the eight-minute meeting. “I said, ‘We’re not losing this game because we didn’t play hard enough to win it. Our guys came out and played harder. It was special to do it here at Coleman.”

Ahead of Wednesday night, Oats talked to the team about the last time Alabama won the SEC title. It was two years ago in a pandemic-restricted season with no fans attending games. The Tide won at Mississippi State and the team bus returned to a crowd of fans. A special moment, Oats said, but winning in front of an announced crowd of 13,474 had a chance to mean more. And it did, with the crowd chanting “SEC” as players posed for photos.

Nick Alvarez is a reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @nick_a_alvarez or email him at [email protected].