The Quad surrounding Denny Chimes was nearly vacant Friday after classes at Alabama. It was a gray day in Tuscaloosa, 56 degrees and a bit drizzly as a few students took the sidewalk.

The area where College Gameday sets up when the ESPN program visits Alabama football games was totally abandoned. No Lee Corso choosing mascot headgear, no head-scratching picks, no Pat McAfee taking potshots at Pac-12 programs his employer helped put in a bad spot, no fans getting ready to cheer on the Crimson Tide at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Just empty chairs, a handful of students and a few squirrels. Less than a mile away, inside Coleman Coliseum, it was a different story.

“Greg Bryne’s a really good friend of mine,” Gameday host Rece Davis told reporters, pausing between words and flashing a grin. “They need a new building.”

Outside the media room, ESPN’s crews laid cable and cracked open Pelican cases, setting up for a show. When the basketball edition of College Gameday goes on the air Saturday, it will be from Tuscaloosa for the first time ever.

The show couldn’t have picked a higher-stakes game to make its Alabama debut. The Crimson Tide is set to face Tennessee in a battle of teams tied atop the SEC, each vying for a league title with just a week to go.

When head coach Nate Oats arrived at UA in 2019, the moment seemed far off. Alabama was finishing up a mediocre decade that hadn’t seen the Tide get past the second round of the NCAA Tournament at any point.

His first season, the team went 16-15. Since then, it’s been an upward trajectory leading to Saturday’s show.

“One of the most interesting things about what he’s done and this quest to try to win three conference championships in four years is that he’s pretty much done it with three different teams,” Davis said. “It’s not as if they built toward a stretch, had a core group that stayed around.”

This year’s Alabama team suffered some unexpected losses before the season, when Charles Bediako declared for the NBA Draft and Jahvon Quinerly transferred to Memphis. That’s not to mention the losses that were foreseen, including No. 2 draft pick Brandon Miller.

The Crimson Tide doesn’t have much of a defense. Still, the powerful offense has blown past enough teams to put Oats’ team in a position to take a regular season title.

Now Gameday is in town for basketball. It’s something Davis, a 1988 UA graduate, wasn’t convinced would happen.

“I didn’t know if we would get here or not,” Davis said. “Because the first thing, in order for us to bring the show here, is you have to be good and you have to sustain it a little bit because, not every week, but the overwhelming majority of the weeks, our show is tied to what the prime game is. That’s not true in football. It’s one of the things that makes basketball different.”

At 9:30 CT, doors will open for students at Coleman for College Gameday, which will air on ABC from 11 a.m. to noon. Then, at 7 p.m. on SEC Network, it’ll be game time.

The biggest question entering the game is, as usual, Alabama’s defense. The Crimson Tide hasn’t been able to stop most teams in the SEC, including the Volunteers, who beat UA 91-71 in Knoxville earlier this season.

Oats has acknowledged the defense isn’t getting back to its 2022-23 level. But given how good the Tide is on the other end, it doesn’t have to.

Still, it has to be better than it was when Alabama gave up 117 against Kentucky.

“To really score, they gotta get stops,” Gameday analyst Seth Greenberg said. “Because they can score, if they can get stops and turnovers. It’s kind of like the second half against Ole Miss (Wednesday), once they started getting some stops, what did they do? They get on a 6-0 run. 9-0 run. 12-0 run. Bam, bam, bam, bam, it happens quick.”

Tennessee has the favorite for the SEC’s player of the year award in Dalton Knecht, who scored 39 points against Auburn Wednesday. The Tide is favored, but with the loss on the road earlier this season, there’s no taking the Volunteers lightly.

Gameday is in Tuscaloosa for a reason. Oats knows the game has the potential to swing either way.

“Defense was the No. 1 problem,” he said of that defeat. “Turnovers on offense were probably equally as big a problem. When you’re turning the ball over 22 times and you’re feeding their transition off your turnovers and your defense isn’t that good to begin with, now you’ve got a real problem.”

But in a perfect world for the Tide, Alabama’s offense pulls together one of the 100-point performances it has turned in throughout the season. It wasn’t able to do in Knoxville, but UA has played far better at home this season.

With Gameday in town, the spotlight is all on Alabama basketball for once. But win or lose, consensus seemed to be that the program is heading the right direction.

Davis reminded fans that rumors of Oats garnering interest from blue-blood programs is a good thing. It means he’s doing something right in Tuscaloosa.

“This is early in the building stage,” he said. “And I really believe that Nate Oats will get Alabama to the Final Four.”