Latrell Wrightsell Jr. had to miss a crucial stretch because of a head injury.

Four games to be exact, and two of those resulted in losses to teams in contention for the SEC: Tennessee and Kentucky. Missing Wrightsell in the Tennessee game especially hurt considering it came down to the last few possessions, and his 3-point shooting could have been especially helpful when Alabama's offense disappeared.

The Vols went on to win that game and then won the SEC regular-season title a few days later. Had Wrightsell not missed time because of the injury, Alabama coach Nate Oats believes his team would have hoisted the regular-season trophy.

"We would have a league championship if he hadn't gone down," Oats said after Alabama beat Arkansas 92-88 on Saturday. "That's some of the adversity we've got to play through. We didn't win a league championship. So let's get ourselves back together, and let's compete for a tournament championship."

Wrightsell returned to action this past week against Florida but only saw a few minutes. Then he was back to full minutes against the Razorbacks, and he scored 20 points in 39 minutes.

"He made some tough plays," Oats said. "You can tell he probably wasn't quite in good enough shape to play 40 minutes, but he had to. We went to overtime."

Then Alabama won, locking up a double bye in the SEC Tournament next week in Nashville.

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Nick Kelly is the Alabama beat writer for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network, and he covers Alabama football and men's basketball. Reach him at nkelly@gannett.com or follow him @_NickKelly on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Nate Oats: Alabama would have won SEC with Latrell Wrightsell Jr.