Paul Finebaum: Alabama won't be fazed by Georgia in SEC Championship
The table has been set for the SEC Championship game between Alabama and Georgia for quite some time, but the delicious matchup is just around the corner as two of the conference’s best will square off in Atlanta on Saturday.
Both squads navigated through their SEC schedules without taking any conference losses in the regular season, with the Crimson Tide fresh off of a thrilling last-minute win over Auburn this past weekend. With that in mind, college football analyst Paul Finebaum explained on ‘McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning’ why he believes Alabama will more than ready for the moment this Saturday.
“I think Alabama has a really good chance,” Finebaum said. “I haven’t really given a whole lot of thought to on the field Saturday yet, but I’ve talked to quite a few different people that really like where Alabama is for all of their faults. It doesn’t seem to matter when the game is being played, which is the most important thing.”
“You can be well prepared, you can look great in practice, and whether this team does or doesn’t, there’s not a team in America that handles the moment better than Alabama,” Finebaum added. “What do we have, five times this year they’ve been either tied or behind and they’ve won those games and that’s why I don’t think Saturday is going to faze them.”
Alabama has come a long way since their early season struggles, boasting a defense that’s one of the best in the country and a quarterback in Jalen Milroe who’s progressed throughout the season and is now regarded as one of the most dangerous dual-threats in the nation. That paired with their history against Georgia gives Finebaum even more confidence in Alabama ahead of the conference title game.
“This is the one school that isn’t over looking at Georgia and going, ‘Oh my goodness, we have to play Georgia’. They know what happened two years ago in this game and they also know what happened two years ago in the national championship game,” Finebaum said.
Georgia’s most recent win over Georgia Tech marked their 29th consecutive victory, a new SEC record. But their last loss came in this very same game to Alabama in the 2021 season, with the Crimson Tide winning the SEC Championship but losing the rematch in the national championship game.
“But I really like everything about this Alabama team, I think has been an absolute … it’s not a masterpiece that’s gonna hang in an art museum in Milan, or Venice, or Florence, or Paris because it’s got too many flaws,” Finebaum explained. “But that doesn’t matter, it’s still a masterpiece of sorts, and it’s maybe a more intriguing masterpiece than any one I’ve ever seen.”
Finebaum believes that this season has been one of Nick Saban’s best in terms of coaching, but will it be enough to defeat the back-to-back defending national champions? We’ll find out this Saturday at 4:00 p.m. ET in the SEC Championship game airing on CBS.