Regardless of how things go for your team, one week into the season is way too soon to draw a clear-cut conclusion as to how your season will go.

Claiming two wins doesn’t mean you should get sized for championship rings or start scrambling for Final Four tickets. Two losses don’t require an immediate coaching search. One and one for a week doesn’t mean you’re destined for a .500 record.

That all being said, you can easily derive one thing from a pair of Alabama wins to start the season: this team is much better than the one that took the floor twelve months ago.

Anthony Grant has been saying for quite awhile that this is a different year, and a different team. That was clearly evident in the final five minutes Monday against Western Carolina.

A year ago, Alabama was just 5-13 in games decided by 10 points or less. Time after time, the Tide would go into the final media timeout with a chance to win, but failed to get the necessary defensive stops that had previously been a staple of Grant-coached teams.

Monday night, with under five minutes to play, freshman guard Justin Coleman made the Tide’s only three-pointer of the half (and just the second of the entire game), to take Alabama from down two, to up one.

It would be WCU’s last lead of the night.

The Crimson Tide could not get stops last season with the game on the line. Monday night, they did. Can they do it against better teams than the Catamounts? We’ll find out soon.

Are they better than last year? We already know the answer.

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