Through nine straight wins, Alabama rose to the No. 2 ranking with barely a scare. Before losing 93-69 to Oklahoma on Saturday, only one of those previous nine wins came with a single-digit winning margin.

That, as coach Nate Oats explained in the aftermath in Norman, didn’t tell the full story.

“To be honest with you, I don’t think we’ve been playing great for a couple of weeks,” Oats said. “We definitely lost our edge a little bit and they got us at the right time.”

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Alabama (18-3) escaped Wednesday’s scare with Mississippi State, 66-63 after trailing by 11. Slow starts were clearly an issue in the two games this week and freshman Rylan Griffen added some perspective to the mental approach.

“There was a point where we kinda thought we were untouchable,” Griffen said, “but today, we came out and lost. Coach Oats has been warning us about something like this happening. We need to come back with an edge on our shoulders and start the games off better.”

The Crimson Tide hadn’t lost since Dec. 17 when Gonzaga left Birmingham a 100-90 winner. None of the nine opponents who followed managed to score 70 points but the Sooners hit that mark with 11:55 to play Saturday.

That loss to Gonzaga led to a team meeting the following day where Oats challenged the team to describe how they’d like to be known. Gritty, blue collar, unselfish, max effort were among the labels thrown out that Sunday in Tuscaloosa.

“Well, we weren’t the toughest team,” Oats said Saturday. “We weren’t the most blue collar. We didn’t play the hardest tonight. Like all the stuff we said we wanted to be that I thought we got back after the Gonzaga loss, I think we’re right back to Ground Zero. I think we have to figure out how bad do we want that again.”

Alabama will face the same Vanderbilt team it beat 78-66 last week in a Tuesday night rematch in Coleman Coliseum. Tip is set for 7:30 p.m. CT.

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