When Alabama began its men’s basketball season back in November, there were lingering questions about how different this team would be from last season’s disjointed group that staggered midseason and eventually collapsed in March.

Through 16 games, the answer to that question has largely come into focus.

Alabama (14-2, 4-0 in SEC) sits with Tennessee atop the SEC standings and can further separate itself from the pack when it hosts LSU (12-4, 1-3 in SEC) at 3 p.m. CT Saturday.

The lapses that defined last season’s roller-coaster ride have been absent for a team that turned over more than half of its roster and continues to solidify its position as one of the elite teams in college basketball this season. The Vols (14-2, 4-0) are ranked higher than Alabama in the NCAA’s NET ranking, but no SEC team is higher in either the Associated Press or coaches poll than the fourth-ranked Tide, which is projected by ESPN as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.

“Every team is gonna play us harder, just because of who we are right now,” freshman forward Noah Clowney said Friday. “We just got to give it everything.”

The Tigers will take the latest swipe when they come to Coleman Coliseum with a team that is unrecognizable from the schools’ most recent meeting last March in Baton Rouge. LSU handed Alabama an overtime loss but days later fired coach Will Wade amid an NCAA investigation. By April, it had no scholarship players left with 11 in the transfer portal.

New coach Matt McMahon, who led Murray State to the second round of the NCAA tournament last year, had a couple players return from the portal but otherwise had to rebuild from scratch. LSU’s top six scorers this season are all transfers, with three including leading scorer K.J. Williams following McMahon from the Racers.

“LSU is a good team. They started the season 12-1,” Nate Oats said Friday, noting their win over Arkansas. “They’ve got good balance besides Williams. They’re a good offensive team. They’re well-coached. They run a lot of stuff. We’re going to have to be ready to go. I think our guys are pretty locked in.”

Alabama has played some of its best basketball of the season over its past three games, outscoring Ole Miss, Kentucky and No. 15-ranked Arkansas by a total of 63 points. It has displayed a level of maturity and killer instinct that was not always present through the first two months of the season, when it notched four top-25 wins but had uneven moments in others.

Oats is looking for the recent approach to continue.

“Can you still prepare for LSU losing three in a row like you just prepared for Arkansas? To me, that’s a sign of maturity,” he said. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do if you’re gonna compete for an SEC championship. You can’t lose home games to teams you’re supposed to beat, because you didn’t prepare for them.

“We challenged our guys. Like, are you on video looking at scouting reports or personnel? You would be if we were playing Auburn, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky. If they are, and we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, then we come out with the energy we need to come out and we’ll shown we have matured.

“But I like the group. We have a good practice today. Their energy was really good in practice coming off a big road win when they could have been tired. I thought they were great. I think we are starting to grow up, showing some maturity.”

Even with three freshmen in its starting lineup and a fourth, Rylan Griffen, seeing notable minutes off the bench, Alabama did not waver despite a second-half run by Arkansas on Wednesday night in Fayetteville.

“It was loud,” Griffen said. “I swear when I was shooting the free throws, the court was shaking.”

Two of those freshmen, Brandon Miller and Noah Clowney, combined for three consecutive three-pointers late in the second half to turn a tenuous two-point lead into an 11-point cushion.

“Hitting three threes in 30 seconds — I look up in the stands and everybody walking out,” Griffen said. “We’re like, ‘Where y’all going?’ It was fun.”

Clowney, who said he likes to play on the road to watch an early-exiting crowd, has displayed a fearlessness and intensity that exemplifies the improved mental approach from the team this season.

“At the end of the day, I don’t care [the opponents] are 280 [pounds], 250, 160 — we all bleed the same blood,” he said Friday. “You might have different attributes that I ain’t got, but at the end of the day, it’s really just effort. That’s how I feel about it.”

Oats has noticed.

“We’ve had some good freshmen here, but he’s got a different mindset. He’s very mature. He’s very professional,” Oats said of Clowney. “You’ve got guys that say they want to be pros, but then they act nothing like a pro when they walk in. Then all the sudden your behavior is going to change if you get lucky enough to be a pro?

“No, he’s one who comes in from Day 1 — acts like a pro, thinks like a pro, takes care of his body like a pro. He’s very, very mature for his age.”

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