Nate Oats added a wrinkle to his pregame speech to players since Alabama arrived in the NCAA tournament.

Mark Sears lights up when talking about it. Before hitting the court a one-minute highlight reel of the Crimson Tide haters — of which there are many — before each of the last four games.

“We love it,” Sears said bluntly.

And they might need more than a minute Saturday.

Practically nobody’s picking Alabama to unseat defending national champ UConn in the second NCAA semifinal set to tip off around 7:49 p.m. CT.

An 11.5-point underdog, Alabama’s hearing all about the Huskies and how they won’t compete in the program’s first Final Four game.

“We see what everybody’s saying about us in the media,” Sears said. ‘They had the easiest route to get here. They’re lucky.” We love it.  We love to prove people wrong and feed off that energy.”

Sophomore Rylan Griffen was bothered by the way Charleston was picked to upset Alabama in the first round of the tournament.

“Because we are a 4-seed. They were a 13,” he said bluntly. “Those games are not set up for 13s to win and the fact they thought we were going to be the team … there’s always an upset but it wasn’t going to be us. Everybody thought it was. And I took that personal.”

Only one 4-seed fell in the opening round this year and that was Auburn to Yale. When that was noted in a Friday interview, Griffen took the opportunity to address the Tide’s biggest rival.

“I wish we could have faced Auburn again for sure,” he said. “I would have liked to have seen Auburn in the SEC tournament or in the Final Four. I think we would have really beat them. I think they got lucky at their house (a 99-81 Tiger win) but it is what it is. We can’t lie, there always is a 13 that wins but they thought we were the 4-seed and I didn’t really like that. So we had to come out and dominate them.”

One particular slight sticks with Alabama the most and it has an Auburn slant as well.

Hearing Tiger alum Charles Barkley’s assessment of the front-line toughness before the Sweet 16 game with North Carolina was a theme of interviews on the disrespect topic.

“They even had big Chuck saying negative stuff about us and how we are frail,” Sears said. “That really gave us fire.”

Most notably, that fire belonged to Grant Nelson.

“Recently, we got called frail by Charles Barkley,” Alabama’s Grant Nelson said. “I feel like that’s more funny than anything just because he said that and we came out and showed we’re not frail. We came out and beat the No. 1 seed. We’ve been doubted and people said a lot of crap about us all season but it’s just about us letting our play do the talking.”

Freshman Jarin Stevenson heard the same knock.

“It’s mainly talk about me and Grant,” he said. “They’re talking about Grant was soft and wasn’t strong enough. He showed out in the UNC game. Then there was talk about me not being ready for the moment and then against Clemson, I feel like I showed up. I knocked down some 3s and played good defense.”

Stevenson admits that disrespect stuck in his head last weekend so he knew he had to deliver.

“It makes me play harder and makes me want to prove those people wrong,” the Chapel Hill product said. “So yeah, I like the hate.”

More recently, Alabama players noted Purdue center Zach Edey’s comments about three Final Four teams having dominant paint players.

“I mean, people have doubted us all year,” Nelson said. “Doubted our defense. I feel like we’ve shown them we can guard people who said a ton of things about us. We kinda let our play do that talking. What we say doesn’t really matter.”

So it’ll come down to the 40 minutes on the floor Saturday night in Arizona — the biggest game in Alabama history that’ll follow Sears’ favorite minute-long highlight reel of his biggest haters.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.