However this all ends for the Alabama men’s basketball team, it will include a trophy for the regular season SEC championship.

However it might be perceived, the championship was claimed on Wednesday at Coleman Coliseum with a 90-85 victory in overtime against rival Auburn.

Like everything else about these last couple weeks, the facts presented in those two sentences are subject to interpretation. It was a controversial game for a messy season. For Auburn, which has lost eight of its last 11, at least the heartaches are only about basketball. We like our sports neat and tidy, but this season has been anything but clean for Alabama.

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The nets that will hang from Alabama’s SEC championship trophy will symbolize wildly different things for the people concerned with a team that remains at the center of a growing national controversy surrounding a murder. For a family in Birmingham, Alabama’s season has come to represent the death of their daughter, 23-year-old Jamea Harris. For Alabama, which is ranked No. 2 nationally and now has a record of 26-4, the SEC title represents the most talented team in the history of the school. For others, it’s an accomplishment that stands for shame and the win-at-all-cost culture that dominates major collegiate athletics.

There will be more games. There will be other seasons. There always are. For me, for many, the lasting effect of this one is away from the court. A person is dead, and lives are shattered forever based on the fateful decisions of people surrounding the slaying of Harris in the early morning hours of Jan.15 in Tuscaloosa.

Harris was a young mother who was enjoying a night out in Tuscaloosa with her boyfriend. Based in part on the decisions of Alabama basketball players that night, she was shot in the face and killed. Basketball player Darius Miles was arrested for capital murder for his alleged role in Harris’ death. It was his gun used in the shooting by his friend Michael Davis, say police. Basketball players Brandon Miller and Jaden Bradley, who remain on the team, were at the scene that night and it was Miller, according to police, who brought the murder weapon to his friends. Neither Miller nor Bradley were charged with crimes.

There is no way to separate this season with that night, and any attempt to ignore it for sake of games or championships contributes to the toxic culture of major collegiate athletics that contributed to Harris’ killing. And we have seen this ugly business of ignore all before: Penn State, Baylor, on and on it goes.

As games go, it couldn’t have been any more dramatic than Auburn coach Bruce Pearl throwing a headset afterwards because he was so upset with the calls of officials. Auburn blew a 17-point lead. Pearl was mad about one foul. If only that armchair analysis actually mattered, though. If only the play-by-play details of a night in an old gym meant anything at all when compared to the gravity of consequences inherent in the ignoring of reality.

It’s dangerous to rationalize the actions of Alabama in the wake of Harris’ death, but many will. Not me. Not here. In playing Miller and Bradley, it is sickening how the university has chosen to ignore its responsibility as a cultural leader and institution of higher learning. The family of Harris said to me in an interview that this season, for them, is covered in the blood of their daughter, and that tragic perspective isn’t going away.

In the pursuit of athletic glory, a dream season has been overtaken by hellish nightmares.

Murder and controversy; shame and silence. From these awful things, who can look away?

Under that spotlight, Alabama played its final home game of the season in front of a supportive and sold out crowd.

Fans will always cheer for their team. It’s why we elevate these games to levels where money is what matters most. Money aside, though, this runaway scandal for the University of Alabama is damaging to the integrity of its enterprise. The more this team wins, the brighter the spotlight grows. It’s an awful saga. The slaying of a 23-year-old mother in Tuscaloosa’s popular entertainment district involves Alabama basketball players, two of which remain on the team and one who is sitting in jail charged with capital murder.

Miles and Davis were denied bond after an initial hearing on Feb.21. Miller and Bradley were allowed to continue playing, and that choice, according to athletics director Greg Byrne, was made by a group of university leaders that included school president Stuart Bell.

I attempted to ask Alabama coach Nate Oats a question after the game, but was ignored by Alabama’s public relations official. So were other reporters. Ignoring questions will not make this go away, though, and it only makes Alabama look worse. People might dismiss those details, or try to discount them, but holding a light to darkness matters. It always does and always will.

An attorney representing Miller, the star player of the team, claims that Miller didn’t know a loaded handgun of a teammate was lying in the backseat of Miller’s car when he drove to meet his teammates near The Strip that night. It’s difficult to believe to say the least, but even that defense raises serious questions about Alabama basketball. Is the culture of guns so prevalent among the players of this team that Miller would actually be casually unaware of a loaded gun in his car?

An NBA executive raised that question to me before this latest game, and his point was this. It’s damning either way. That question represents a gross lack of leadership at Alabama and so much more. It stands for the killing of Harris and a compromise in the name of money and trophies.

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.