It got weird again for Alabama at the SEC basketball tournament.

That’s life for a team at the center of a controversial spotlight on the big stage of major college basketball. Every day it’s something different that breaks through the wall separating sports as entertainment and sports as a sign of the times.

The spotlight only grows larger with victories, and now Alabama is in the championship game of the SEC tournament after defeating overmatched Missouri 72-61 on Saturday. Alabama plays Texas A&M at noon on Sunday at Bridgestone Arena.

On Friday, the first day for Alabama in the SEC tournament, the Tuscaloosa district attorney’s office released the news that basketball player Darius Miles had been indicted by a grand jury for capital murder. The news dropped while his former teammates were playing a game against Mississippi State.

For games I’ve covered as a sports reporter, that one falls near the top for the most bizarre day at the office.

On Saturday, some misguided fans at the arena entered the swirl and offered a glimpse into an aspect of Alabama’s story that peddles in the grotesque, fans celebrating a tragic murder. In the SEC, where the league champions itself with the slogan “it just means more,” things can get ugly pretty fast.

And it did in Nashville on the third day of the SEC tournament.

Alabama played in the early game against Missouri, which tipped off at noon. In the second game of the day, it was Vanderbilt vs. Texas A&M, and the hometown team lost to the Aggies 87-75. With Vanderbilt playing the second game, why, then, were a vocal group of Vanderbilt students screaming as loud as possible an hour before tipoff of Alabama’s game?

To heckle Alabama star Brandon Miller with distasteful chants of “Bran-don Kill-er”, of course.

Vandy is the “smart school” in the SEC, but on this day some of its students were only using half of their brains.

The students should have been kicked out of the arena. Instead, they were allowed to stay and watched with everyone else as Miller took over the game. Miller is the player who transported the gun to the scene where Harris was shot and killed. Amid everything, Miller has played well on the court and improved his projected value as a future pro. Against Mizzou, he finished with 20 points, 12 rebounds and four assists, and completely dominated the run of play from the beginning of the second half until the buzzer.

And he didn’t do it without making a little noise himself.

“Let’s [expletive] go!” Miller screamed over press row and toward the crowd during one stoppage. Seated in the front row, close enough to catch some of Miller’s sweat and spittle, was SEC commissioner Greg Sankey.

Nothing wrong with a little performance art for the fans. Miller isn’t a pro yet, but he already understands his role as an entertainer.

Miller’s presence on the court, considering his proximity to Harris’ death, has made Alabama basketball a flashpoint, but I can only shake my head in disgust at the actions of a couple self-proclaimed Alabama fans who attended the game. Two grown men — not students, to be clear — wore Alabama shirts on Saturday that read “Killin’ our way through the SEC in ‘23.” When approached for comment by AL.com, one of the men told colleague John Talty to “get the [expletive] out of my face.”

It’s unfair, of course, to tie an entire fanbase to the actions of a couple degenerates, but the shirts are noteworthy for understanding the toxic fan culture hovering around Alabama basketball this postseason. Opposing SEC fan bases of Alabama share culpability, too, for creating this sludge the SEC now trudges through. From the moment news broke of Miles’ arrest, an element of SEC fans have vocally celebrated the opportunity to amplify Alabama’s mistakes along the way.

Wanting the worst for Alabama as an opposing fan is not the same thing as wanting justice for Harris’ death, and the nuance of distinction isn’t hard to understand. It’s the difference between dignity and shame.

How we got here will continue to haunt Alabama, and create awkward scenes for the SEC at one of its signature events.

That’s because the shooting death of 23-year-old Jamea Harris of Birmingham on Jan. 15 will remain the most significant moment of this season for the Alabama basketball team. Miles was charged with aiding and abetting an alleged murder when, according to police, he passed a gun to friend Michael Davis. Davis then used that gun to allegedly murder Harris.

Compared to the events of that night, these games are just another sideshow, and the wall separating sports entertainment and social indictment continues to fall.

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.