LSU effectively ended Alabama football’s College Football Playoff hopes last season. The Crimson Tide couldn’t stop the Tigers in overtime, and took its second loss of the campaign, after previously falling to Tennessee.

Alabama has already avenged one of last season’s losses, beating the Volunteers 34-20 on Oct. 21. Now, the Tigers are set to visit Tuscaloosa in a game with massive SEC West implications.

The Crimson Tide’s players said they’re taking the Saturday matchup seriously given what happened last season.

“It’s a lot of motivation,” offensive tackle JC Latham said Tuesday. “Every day, every time throughout the offseason, whenever things got the hardest, thought about this game, thought about the Tennessee game. We have a standard that we always have to play to. And putting ourselves in situations to where the game is decided on one play is something we never want to do. Games like this are always personal, yeah.”

Alabama has had extra time to think about last season’s loss. The Crimson Tide had a bye week following the Tennessee game.

According to linebacker Chris Braswell, the game has been on its mind since the win over the Volunteers.

“This game is very personal for us,” Braswell said. “So the whole bye week we were taking it as a personal matter, and even this week it’s very personal.”

The Tigers are ranked No. 13 on the Associated Press media poll entering Saturday’s game. LSU has two losses, which came against Florida State and Ole Miss.

Still, Brian Kelly’s squad has one of the nation’s better offenses, and will be looking to knock Alabama out of playoff contention again. On Monday, Nick Saban said he was expecting another good game in the series.

“We’re going to need an excellent attention to detail, focus and good technical preparation in the game,” Saban said. so that everybody plays responsibility football whether it’s offense, defense or special teams. I think this has developed into sort of a rivalry game because they’re always ranked, we’re always ranked and it’s always a big game relative to what happens in our division; so it’s an important game for both teams.”

Alabama and LSU are scheduled to kick off at 6:45 p.m. CT on Saturday in Tuscaloosa. The game will be aired on CBS.