It's been NCAA tournament or bust for this Alabama basketball team since it signed that landmark recruiting class last year.
Now 17 games into the 2017-18 season, the Crimson Tide face quite a stretch after an uneven non-conference season. As of Monday, Avery Johnson's third team is solidly on the shaky ground often called the bubble.
ESPN's latest bracket projection has Alabama getting the last at-large bid while the CBS Sports version has the Tide on the outside.
Alabama (11-6, 3-2) has an RPI of No. 39, according to the official NCAA website. That teeters on the edge of an 11-seed.
There's opportunity on the horizon, though.
Auburn (16-1, 4-0 SEC) brings a national-best 14-game winning streak to Tuscaloosa at 6 p.m. CT Wednesday. It's the first of four games against teams currently ranked in the top 10 of the RPI for an Alabama team in need of resume building wins.
As of Monday, the best win of the Tide season came Dec. 6 against Rhode Island, the No. 14 team in the RPI. Its other top-50 win came against a No. 33 Texas A&M team that's now lost five straight.
Two top-50 non-conference losses came to Arizona (No. 23) and Texas (No. 50). The worst loss on Alabama's sheet is the Jan. 2 setback to No. 147 Vanderbilt on Jan. 2. The shorthanded loss to RPI No. 80 Minnesota is the next-worst smudge considering the Gophers have now lost three straight games.
After Auburn, Alabama gets No. 62 Mississippi State, then travels to No. 73 Ole Miss before another top-10 team comes to Coleman Coliseum. No. 4 Oklahoma and star freshman Trae Young will be in Tuscaloosa on Jan. 27 as part of the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
Alabama also has a Feb. 17 trip to RPI No. 9 Kentucky four days before playing at Auburn on Feb. 21.
The Tide won back to back games for the first time since November by beating No. 55 South Carolina and No. 59 LSU last week. That followed consecutive losses to Vanderbilt and Georgia.
In terms of expectations, it's fair to say this Alabama team is behind where preseason projections dictated. Non-conference opportunity was squandered, though a challenging SEC schedule and Oklahoma's visit creates a high-risk, high-reward opportunity for an Alabama program playing for its first NCAA trip since 2012.
Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande.