The two No. 1 overall seeds from the past two NCAA Tournaments, Alabama and UConn, will clash in the desert on Saturday. For Tide basketball to stay on its program-best run, it’ll need to knock off a team eyeing its own history.

March Madness has not produced a repeat champion since 2006-07 (Florida). Dan Hurley’s Huskies have arguably come the closest. UConn is tops nationally in almost every advanced metric. Nearly every pundit picked the Huskies as a national title contender and UConn has played like the favorite, beating up on teams throughout the postseason.

On the other bench, Alabama and Nate Oats are playing their best basketball of the year, finally matching a robust statistical output with wins. It’ll be a red-hot Tide (25-11) against a dominant UConn (35-3) in the Final Four.

“But I don’t know if it’s truly hit me yet,” Oats said after Alabama booked a trip to Phoenix with a win over six-seeded Clemson last Saturday. “Probably won’t hit me until after the Final Four is over because I’m going to enjoy it tonight and we’ve got to figure out how to beat UConn.”

No team has beaten the Huskies since Creighton took advantage of a dire shooting effort on Feb. 20 in Omaha, Nebraska. UConn’s 11-straight victories are the longest active streak nationally, a run that’s coincided with 10-straight NCAA Tournament wins by at least 10 points. Aside from a shootout against St. John’s in the Big East Tournament, no team has kept it close with the Huskies for 40 minutes.

Both benches have similar pieces but different stars than when Alabama and UConn met in November 2022 (an 82-67 UConn win). The Huskies optimize a roughly seven-player rotation. Each of its starters average 10-plus points per game. An explosive offense is birthed from elite interior defense, a system Oats noted isn’t too different from Alabama’s.

Kenpom.com ranks UConn first and fourth, respectively, in adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency. Alabama is third in offense and has been well documented but rarely seen in the postseason, 105th defensively.

Tristen Newton is UConn’s 6-foot-5 star averaging 15.0 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. He tallied 50 points against Stetson, Northwestern and San Diego State, UConn’s opening three Tournament games, before dropping to a five-point effort against Illinois — his second-lowest output this season.

Alabama guard Rylan Griffen will likely be tasked with stopping Newton or Cam Spencer, a grad transfer guard (Rutgers, Loyola-Maryland), who averages 14.4 points on a 61.1 effective field-goal percentage (a weighted measure of a player’s ability to make shots). Spencer and Newtwon will also try to limit UA’s leading man Mark Sears. The 21.5-points-a-game scorer struggled with UNC’s length in the Sweet 16 but still managed 18 points.

UConn has a top-30 3-point defense, limiting teams to 30.9% from behind the arc. The Huskies make 35.8% of 3s but two of its worst 3-point outings have come in the last four games, an 18-point win over Northwestern and a 15-point win over Illinois.

The Huskies methodically grind opponents down with the 294th-longest average possession in the country (18.5 seconds). As Oats said back in Tuscaloosa, Alabama will want a shootout. Clemson limited UA’s fastbreak a bit, yet in the second half the Tide started to run the floor and the Tigers couldn’t keep up. A similar game plan may be on the horizon.

UConn has won the Tournament all 5 times it has made the Final Four. Alabama will try to stop them en route to its first.

Nick Alvarez is a reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @nick_a_alvarez or email him at [email protected].