As sophomore point guard Trevor Releford’s game-winning three-point attempt fell short (for reasons that normally require a whistle, but I digress), there were certainly some students who did not know or care and would not have known the final score had they not seen a tweet or Facebook status.

I also know there are some of you who are thumbing through today’s Crimson White and reading this column as you wash the tear stains out of your Crimson Chaos T-shirt. For those who just screwed the cap back on their Tide detergent, know that the Alabama basketball program is much better for that loss, even though it doesn’t feel like it right now.

The tournament experience they got, while not very much, is enough to send this team a long way in the future.

The tournament bid the team received this year gave Alabama an extra four days of uninterrupted practice that it would not have gotten otherwise. It doesn’t seem like much, but coaches can do a lot with four days of uninterrupted practice that isn’t loaded down with nothing but gameplanning like it is in the regular season.

Also, the team now knows how head coach Anthony Grant does things in the NCAA tournament. If you know anything about Grant, it’s that he has a way of going about his business and a nuclear meltdown would not convince him to change the smallest detail of it.

Now, the team knows what it’s like to go dancing under Grant, and most of that team will be coming back next year. Alabama is only losing senior forward JaMychal Green and maybe junior forward Tony Mitchell, but Mitchell wasn’t on the team when tournament time came around anyway.

So, to begin next year, Alabama will have eight players on the roster that have been on the floor in the NCAA tournament (which combined to play 163 out of 200 available minutes in that game), as well as two more players that were there every step of the way (Carl Engstrom and Retin Obasohan) and are threats to see minute increases next season.

Add in all of the experience this group of players accumulated throughout the regular season, in the Southeastern Conference and in the NCAA tournament, and the team will be primed and ready to improve its regular season mark and make a splash in the NCAA tournament.

Just the experience alone will help the Crimson Tide in the 2012-2013 season. Freshman guard Levi Randolph went from being just another college athlete coming out of Bob Jones High School in Madison, Ala., to the player that accumulated more starts than anyone else on Alabama’s team in just seven months.

Freshman guard Trevor Lacey came to the Capstone trying to recover from offseason knee surgery. He ended the season with a 15-point performance and a near game-winner in the SEC tournament against Florida and another 13 points in his NCAA tournament debut.

My point is this: Next year, you might be able to put Alabama in your Sweet 16 and not get laughed out of your bracket pool.