Until 2018, No. 16 seeds in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament were winless against No. 1 seeds. That changed when UMBC shocked Virginia five years ago, a bit of history that Nate Oats shared with his top-seeded Tide this week.

“It’s been done before that a 16 has beat a one,” Oats said during the opening statement of his news conference Wednesday. “Players are well aware of that.”

Alabama enters Thursday’s first-round game of the 2023 tournament favored between 23.5 and 24.5 points on major sports books over No. 16 seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

While Oats mentioned and did not dwell on UMBC’s accomplishment with his players, the precedent serves a purpose for the fourth-year coach.

“Don’t think that you are a one seed you are guaranteed to come out of the first round,” he said. “It’s not guaranteed. It’s happened already.”

Alabama will tip off at 1:45 p.m. CT in Birmingham’s Legacy Arena against the Islanders, which won the Southland Conference regular season and tournament titles, then beat Southeast Missouri State in Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday night to earn a shot at the Tide.

“It’s March,” Corpus Christi guard Simeon Fryer said. “I feel like at this point anybody can beat anybody. We’re not really coming here to lose obviously. We’re actually coming here to shock the world.”

Last season, a capable but erratic Alabama team stumbled against some of its weaker opponents and eventually was upset by No. 11 seed play-in winner Notre Dame in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

This season, Alabama had a couple early-season blips in putting away lesser opponents but generally has shown more maturity in winning games in which it was a runaway favorite.

“I think we’ve done well,” Oats said. “We have never come out and not taken those opponents seriously.”

Oats and his staff have been on the other side of lopsided NCAA tournament meetings. He led Buffalo as a No. 13 seed to an upset over No. 4 seed Arizona in the 2018 tournament, when the Wildcats were led by a first-team All-American in Deandre Ayton.

“So I kind of shared my experience being the lower seeded team coming in, what they were going to be thinking,” Oats said.

Oats’ assistant Charlie Henry, who was named Georgia Southern’s new head coach Tuesday, was part of an Iowa State staff in 2015 that lost as a No. 3 seed to No. 15 seed UAB.

“We’ve had experiences on both sides we shared with these guys,” Oats said. “I think our guys are ready to go.”

The message from early in the season was clear: Alabama’s basketball team this season had learned to “check their egos at the door,” Oats said in November, and the culture of his locker room continued to leave Oats optimistic about his team’s chances this March.

“I think we have a maturity about us, a camaraderie, a cohesiveness — the chemistry is great,” he said Wednesday. “There’s literally nobody jealous about anybody else on this team, which is rare at this level. And the talent level is high.

“The more you guys get to know our group, I think the more you are going to love them.”

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