NASHVILLE — Alabama pulled off the early storyline of the Southeastern Conference Tournament on Thursday with a stunning second-half comeback against South Carolina. The Crimson Tide rallied from an 18-point second-half deficit to send Devan Downey and Co. packing with a 68-63 loss. Alabama flustered South Carolina in the second half with a smothering defensive effort. The Tide held the Gamecocks to 29.6 percent shooting in the second half en route to a game-winning 26-5 run. Alabama was nasty, aggressive and just downright dominant during the comeback, holding arguably the league’s best player, Downey, to just 3-of-13 second-half shooting.

UK will play Alabama on Friday at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament.”Our guys, I thought, showed great toughness, a great will to, even when things were going bad, to stay together and to fight and do the things that really we worked on in terms of building all year,” Alabama head coach Anthony Grant said.Now here’s the scary part: Kentucky didn’t see any of it.Midway through the second half with South Carolina leading by 18, the UK players, presumably scouting the game in one of the end zones behind the goal, headed for the exits for practice with the game’s outcome in little doubt.Who could blame them for leaving? Downey was having his way with the Tide, and the Cats certainly weren’t alone in thinking the game was over. But just as soon as Kentucky left, Alabama somehow turned on a switch and took control of the game. The Gamecocks look flustered and confused and scored just 11 points over the last 12 minutes of the game after taking that 18-point lead. Does it matter in terms of scouting that the Cats probably didn’t find out about the comeback until arriving back at the team hotel? Probably not considering assistant coaches Orlando Antigua, John Robic and Rod Strickland stayed behind to watch the game, and the fact that the two teams played a month ago (a 66-55 UK win). But the Alabama players certainly noticed the early exit.”I guess they thought we were just going to tuck it in and give the game away, but we’re a rough and scrappy team and we know how to fight back,” Alabama forward Justin Knox said.It had to rub the Alabama players the wrong way, though, that UK didn’t even bother to stick around for the whole game, right?”Nah, we’re good right now,” Alabama forward JaMychal Green said. “We’re on a winning streak so we’re feeling good about ourselves.”Freshman forward Tony Mitchell said it would benefit the Tide because the Cats, even if they did watch it on TV, didn’t get to see in person the newfound toughness that has sparked ‘Bama to a three-game winning streak.”That’s good for us because they don’t know what we did in that second half, but I know they’re going to come out ready to play just like we’re going to come out ready to play,” said Mitchell, who scored a team-high 13 points in the first meeting against UK.What Kentucky will find Friday is a different team than the one it saw a month ago, one that stresses defense and rebounding.”I feel like we’re getting better and better with every game we play with our identity,” Green said. “We go out there and just run hard and play tough defense. We try to get our opponent to have a low shooting percentage and try to keep them off the glass and not let them make 3s.”