PHOENIX REGIONAL First Round: Various Sites Thursday, March 18 • (4) Maryland 86, (13) UTEP 83 • (8) Alabama 65, (9) Southern Illinois 64 • (5) Syracuse 80, (12) Brigham Young 75 • (1) Stanford 71, (16) UT-San Antonio 45 • (2) Connecticut 70, (15) Vermont 53 • (7) DePaul 76, (10) Dayton 69 Friday, March 19 • (3) N.C. State 61, (14) La.-Lafayette 52 • (6) Vanderbilt 71, (11) Western Michigan 58 Second Round Saturday, March 20 • (5) Syracuse 72, (4) Maryland 70 • (8) Alabama 70, (1) Stanford 67 • (2) Connecticut 72, (7) DePaul 55 Sunday, March 21 • (6) Vanderbilt 75, (3) N.C. State 73 Regional Semfinals America West Arena Thursday, March 25 • (2) Connecticut 73, (6) Vanderbilt 53 • (8) Alabama 80, (5) Syracuse 71 Regional Finals Saturday, March 27 • (2) Connecticut 87, (8) Alabama 71 More from SI.com • Updated bracket | Daily schedule • SI.com Writers: Inside the tournament • E-mail Alerts | Hoops Bracket Challenge • Complete NCAA tournament coverage

PHOENIX -- Alabama, when you get right down to it, has no right to be playing a game to get to the Final Four. These guys ought to be sitting at home eating barbecue, talking about the South rising again and waiting for football season, just like the rest of the state.

But, of course, this Alabama basketball team is different. It is, in fact, like no Alabama basketball team ever. These guys don't hold to any kind of form. These guys don't know that they're simply not supposed to be here.

All they know, really, is that if they keep playing, keep listening to their coach, keep firing away from outside when need be, or keep pounding it inside when the occasion arises, if they keep playing defense ... well, they know now that they can beat anybody. The No. 1 team in the country. The defending national champion. Anybody.

Yes. A basketball team from a state whose sports knowledge often begins and ends with a houndstooth hat and the Iron Bowl, has shown it can beat the best.

"We went through a tough road to get here," said Antoine Pettway, the hard-nosed and bloodied Alabama guard. "Every team we played, they said we didn't belong here. But here we are. Here we still are."

Alabama's basketball team had been here before, in the final 16 of the NCAA tournament. Eight times the Tide had been here. But never had they taken that one more step. Never had they moved into what now is called the Elite Eight.

And going up against Syracuse, a team that had won 23 games this season coming off its national championship season, few figured the Tide would.

But 'Bama came out Thursday against the ballyhooed Syracuse zone in the Phoenix "Aren't We in The West?" Regional and promptly shot it down. Eight 3-pointers in the first half helped the Crimson Tide to a two-point lead at the half. Then, in the second half, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim relented and went to a man-to-man defense to slow down the Tide -- and the Tide feasted on it instead.

Sophomore forward Chuck Davis, a skinny-ish 6-foot-7 forward from Selma, Ala., started to work his way inside against the Syracuse frontmen. Davis backed down 250-pound Jeremy McNeil. He worked around 6-8 Hakim Warrick. He ended up with 17 second-half points. By the time the Tide had taken the Orangemen inside and outside and every other side, Syracuse didn't know which way was which. Alabama had a season-high 22 assists. Pettway had nine of them, without a turnover. The Tide shot 50 percent. They had 11 steals.

"We got them out of their comfort zone," Pettway said. "We felt like we could make things happen."

Said Alabama coach Mark Gottfried: "When they went to the man, our guys really lit up."

The Orangemen did not go quietly -- no good teams do -- roaring back from 11 points down to tie the score at 55-55 with 8:45 left (and 57-57 with 8:17 remaining). But an 8-0 run by the Tide, punctuated by a Davis dunk over Warrick, ended the Orangemen's hopes. That was that.

"We just really couldn't stop them defensively enough to get to where we wanted to go. They shot the ball well. They played well," Boeheim said. "We made some uncharacteristically bad turnovers in this game that really hurt us."

Syracuse turned the ball over 18 times, 10 in the second half, and a lot of them probably were uncharacteristic. But a lot of them were due to the harassing, man-to-man coverage of Alabama, too. This was a team that, clearly, was not impressed with the defending champions.

Alabama came into this tournament scaring absolutely no one. The Tide had a 17-12 record during the regular season. These players didn't even win their half of the Southeastern Conference. They were seeded eighth in the Phoenix Regional.

The Tide squeaked past Southern Illinois by a point in the first round, and people shook their heads knowingly. But then, in the second round in Seattle, the Tide stunned everyone by upending No. 1 Stanford 70-67.

Still, the Tide came to Phoenix as afterthoughts. The defending national champs were here. So were the 1999 champions, Connecticut.

And now, look who the Tide gets Saturday with a trip to the Final Four on the line: UConn, a team that spent eight weeks this season as the nation's No. 1 team. The Huskies, who handled Vanderbilt in the first game here Thursday, are the No. 2 seed in the region.

"We already beat the No. 1 team in the country," said Pettway. "Now we get to go up against a team that was No. 1 half the season."

The Tide will be underdogs again in Saturday's final against the Huskies. They've impressed a lot of people, two weeks in a row. But everyone knows -- they haven't impressed enough. Even the Tide knows that.

They win. They beat the best. They knocked off the defending champions Thursday night. But it's simply not enough. Not yet. Not for their critics.

And certainly not for them.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.