It's easy to forget where Alabama stood 4.4 seconds before the buzzer Thursday in St. Louis.

An 18-point win over rival Auburn the following afternoon is enough to erase the dire moment this Crimson Tide basketball program faced in that hockey arena in St. Louis.

It illustrates the fine line between success and failure in this high-stakes world of college sports.

This was an Alabama basketball team that entered the season with self-imposed expectations of an NCAA run. A generational recruiting class headlined by a potential top-10 draft pick had Alabama basketball thinking thoughts it hadn't in at least a decade.

That timeout huddle in the closing seconds of the Texas A&M game ran back memories of Avery Johnson's triumphant airport arrival. It was followed a day later by big talk of taking this program to new heights after slipping into a NIT-caliber program -- not a disaster but just blah.

Yet there they stood, scheming a play to avoid a collapse that would've brought all of that into the discussion. Nursing a five-game losing streak that took the Crimson Tide from a decent NCAA tournament seeding to the outside of bubble talk, it needed something special. The Aggies just got a 3-pointer from T.J. Sparks to leave Alabama down 70-69.

Just 4.4 seconds separated Johnson's third team from loss no tournament dream could survive. A 17-15 record with six straight losses falls flat even with the Quadrant 1 wins on the resume.

So, the coach turned to his young superstar for what became the moment that plugged the leak.

That sprinting floater at the buzzer by Collin Sexton didn't win a national championship. Second-and-26 it was not, but it reversed the negativity that compounded with each of the five straight losses. That March 8 win was Alabama's first since Feb. 13.

With the No. 8 recruiting class, this just wasn't supposed to be Alabama's fate. It survived that wild 5-on-3 ending against a ranked Minnesota team that November night in Brooklyn.

Sexton was the crown jewel while Huntsville's John Petty was no recruiting afterthought. The No. 33 overall prospect agreed there was pressure building on the team when things went sideways in late February.

"It kinda was a little bit," Petty said before crediting the coaching staff for keeping the vibes positive even after the rock-bottom, 21-point loss that embarrassed the team on senior night against Florida.

Sitting back in his chair Sunday after Alabama was selected as a No. 9 seed, Johnson was asked if his team could've made the field without that Sexton buzzer-beater.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm not an expert. I'm not sure but I don't think it would have helped our chances."

He went on to tell a story about his old San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. Coming off a 56-26 season, the coach's third team started the season 6-8. Johnson scored 18 points in a 99-82 win against the Houston Rockets. It was the first of a nine-game winning streak in a season that ended with San Antonio (site of this year's Final Four) winning the NBA Finals.

That was 19 years ago and Popovich is one of the most successful coaches in league history. He has five titles in 22 seasons, but there were calls for his firing after starting that 1998-99 season 6-8.

"Had we not won that game at Houston, who knows?" Johnson said Sunday after qualifying for his first NCAA tournament as a college coach.

He went on from there.

"Crazy things happen in sports," Johnson continued. "You look at some of the things in college. A guy makes a shot -- an incredible shot -- and keeps a team advancing in the early rounds and then they make it and win it. So, you just never know. Things don't always happen the way you want them to happen.

"I didn't want to have a five-game losing streak. Instead of me having sleeping four hours a night, I was getting two. It ended up the way it ended up and fortunately, we're still alive. And however long we're alive, we're alive."

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter

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