It’s fair to say there wasn’t much warning for what Alabama women’s soccer is doing.

Coming off an 11-10-1 season, it hasn’t been more than four games over .500 in two decades. There have been flashes of what’s been on display this season but nothing like this.

The Crimson Tide is 13-1-1 entering an 11 a.m. CT Sunday showdown with No. 7 Arkansas (10-2-1) in Tuscaloosa.

And in a season where every week breaks the program for the highest ranking, Alabama will face the Razorbacks as the No. 2 team in every major national poll.

The unbeaten streak is up to 13 games after a 4-1 win over No. 20 Ole Miss last Thursday and beating LSU, 5-0 on Sunday. It’s a run that included wins over top-10 teams like BYU and South Carolina.

And as coach Wes Hart points out, the nine-game winning streak hasn’t really included many narrow escapes. The Tide has just a single one-goal win since tying Utah on Sept. 4.

Alabama’s outscored opponents 32-5 in those last nine wins and that included No. 5 South Carolina and Tennessee, the preseason pick to win the SEC. Alabama was voted to finish fifth in the league before the season.

So did Hart see this coming?

“Yes and no,” he said Wednesday night.

They had considerable talent returning, enrolling and coming off injuries.

“But you have been around sports long enough to know it’s not just about talent,” Hart said. “A lot of stuff needs to come together. The chemistry, you have to catch breaks. There are just so many things that come into play. For us, it wasn’t a surprise we were going to be talented and have the potential to be quite good. But it’s hard to say we’d be No. 2 in the country before the season started.”

Alabama’s attacking style has the Tide outscoring the opposition 46-9 this season.

Riley Parker Mattingly’s 11 goals lead the way while her 24 points are tied with Felica Knox. Her 14 assists pair with five goals.

In goal, McKinley Crone has an 80.4 save percentage, stopping 37 shots while allowing nine goals in 15 games.

The lone loss on Alabama’s sheet came Aug. 21 at Miami with a 1-0 final.

Hart is in his eighth season leading Alabama with 2017 being the previous high-water mark. The Tide finished 12-8-1 but his first winning record in conference play came last year at 5-4-1.

The real breakthrough last fall came with 1-0 win over Clemson gave the program its first NCAA tournament win. BYU then ended the Tide season with a 4-1 loss.

Alabama would beat both early in the 2022 season with a 3-0 win over then-No. 18 Clemson on Aug. 28 followed by a 3-2 win over BYU in Provo on Sept. 1.

“It certainly helped beating Clemson and BYU, I think that was kind of the moment,” Hart said. “Like I said, we knew we were good coming into it but getting those results were massive.”

The 4-2 win over Tennessee (9-3-1, 5-1-0) on Sept. 22 was another milestone in Hart’s mind. The two goals allowed in Knoxville ended a three-game shutout streak that included the 2-0 beating of No. 5 South Carolina.

From here, Alabama follows the showdown with No. 7 Arkansas with three final SEC games of the regular season. It heads to Starkville on Oct. 20 to face Mississippi State (9-2-3, 3-2-1) before returning home for Florida (2-11-0, 0-6-0). The regular-season finale comes Oct. 27 at Auburn (6-3-5, 2-3-1).

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