UConn will be the best team Alabama basketball has faced all season. That’s fitting, given Saturday’s game will be in the Final Four.

The Huskies can beat a team all at once. In the Elite Eight, they put up a 30-point run against Illinois, robbing the IIlini of any hope.

Alabama head coach Nate Oats mentioned the run in his opening statement during a Thursday press conference.

“UConn is great,” Oats said. “Danny (Hurley) has done a great job. As Danny said, they’re bulletproof. Other teams have been up on them, going on runs. The problem is, they go on a huge run, as evidenced by the last game, 30-0. They make these enormous runs.”

According to Oats, he’s showing the Tide film of the successes other teams have had against UConn. He said Alabama does well at some of the things that show up on tape.

Still, the Huskies will be an enormous challenge.

“We just can’t give them these big runs that everybody gives up,” Oats said. “It’s a lot easier said than done. I mean, over 40 minutes, we’re going to be in there, we got a chance. We played some of the best teams in the country. We didn’t win in the non-conference against some of the best teams, but we had margins.”

Oats pointed out that the Crimson Tide led against Purdue, Creighton and Arizona early in the season. Back then, Alabama couldn’t close out tight games.

To earn a trip to the national championship game, it’ll need a more complete effort.

“We played good teams and (we’ve) been up on them,” Oats said. “We can go back to that. We just got to close out 40 minutes.”

Alabama’s tallest players will be a major factor. UConn boasts 7-foot-2, 280-pound big man Donovan Clingan, and he’ll be an extremely tough assignment for the likes of Grant Nelson and Nick Pringle.

To break up runs, those two will need to be active on the boards against Clingan.

“We’ve been battle-tested with playing (Zach) Edey early in the year,” Pringle said Thursday. “That’s just a guy we have to keep off the boards, keep a body on him, make sure we don’t have any easy angles to the basket, and I feel like everything will take care of itself.”

Both Pringle and Nelson had some of their best games in the season last weekend. Nelson was the star of the show against North Carolina, finishing with 24 points, 12 rebounds and 5 blocks.

The North Dakota native specifically mentioned the need to shut down runs as a key to success against the Huskies.

“They go on runs; it seems like every game they play,” Nelson said. “So stopping them at the beginning of those runs, trying to hold it to like a six-point run instead of like a 30-point run like they went on last game. They’re obviously a solid team all-around and I think we’ve got a pretty good scouting report set up to help us go into this game with the most confidence.”

Alabama and UConn are set to tip off around 7:49 p.m. CT on Saturday. The game will be aired on TBS.