Alabama basketball has been here before. The Crimson Tide suffered a loss by double-digit points to Florida in the SEC Tournament last season, something it did again on Saturday, dropping 104-82 to the Gators in the semifinal round.

It all worked out fine for the 2023-24 Tide. That team shook off the conference tournament defeat, got a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, got hot at the right time and went all the way to the Final Four.

As UA prepares to learn its 2024-25 postseason fate, players from the Final Four team said that run provided lessons that could be useful now.

“I’ve been there, so I kind of see how the NCAA Tournament is,” Mo Dioubate said in the locker room Saturday after the loss. “The competition level, the environment. I’m only a sophomore but I can still give guys wisdom on how to prepare and how the tournament is and what we have to do to win games.”

Last year’s Alabama team crawled into the NCAA Tournament following a woeful stretch. The Crimson Tide lost four of six before the first round of the Big Dance.

Then, UA beat Charleston and Grand Canyon to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. It took down No. 1-seed North Carolina there, before beating Clemson in the Elite Eight, securing a Final Four bid for the first time in program history.

“I feel like we have a lot of talent this year,” Jarin Stevenson said. “We had a lot of talent last year. I feel like the main thing again is just regroup and seeing what we did wrong. That’s what we did last year too. So yeah, regrouping, getting the leaders together and just going from there.”

The 2023-24 Alabama team wasn’t expected to make a Final Four run. This year’s group will likely be a No. 2 seed in the tournament, and has, at least on paper, more talent than the last.

Nate Oats said he thought this year’s group is a better team, and shared his takeaway from the Final Four run.

“I​​ think the lesson learned last year is we’re not going to get anywhere being 110th, 112th ranked defense in the country,” Oats said after the Florida loss. “We’re going to have to determine we’re actually going to guard somebody. We did for four straight games in the NCAA Tournament. We played really good defense.

“We got everybody to buy into playing hard on the defensive end. Our defense was good enough to make a four-game run. We put together some pretty good scouting reports I thought that fit. We knocked off some pretty good teams.”

Alabama will learn its postseason fate Sunday. The NCAA Tournament selection show is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. CT on CBS.

The team is waiting out bad weather in Nashville before traveling back to Tuscaloosa. After it arrives, Dioubate said the team will have a chat.

“We got more fifth-year guys this year than we did last year,” Dioubate said. “We understand that this is their last year, and they understand it as well. So hopefully it will all just click at one time like we did last year. We’re gonna have a meeting once we get back home and we’re gonna have a meeting about it, just like we did last year.”