The Tide has already rained on the Tigers’ parade once this season.

On paper, the rematch doesn’t look much more promising for the Tigers, even with LSU (14-10, 5-7 SEC) coming off an encouraging victory over Ole Miss on Saturday.

The Tigers have gotten their hopes up against Bama before — Jan. 13, to be exact.

LSU was fresh off impressive back-to-back road victories over Texas A&M and Arkansas, and there was real interest detected in the program, just like first-year head coach Will Wade had promised.

Fans packed the Maravich Assembly Center. There were reports of face-painting.

Then the thud — Alabama 74, LSU 66.

LSU has shown some encouraging up and some predictable downs since then.

But the loss to the Tide still sticks in Wade’s craw.

“They killed us,” Wade said.

He didn’t feel much better after watching tape of the Tide’s 78-50 destruction of then-No. 18-ranked Tennessee Saturday.

“I had to turn it off with four minutes left so I could actually get some rest,” Wade said. “They played so well. It’s as good as I’ve seen a team on tape all season. Just played tremendous.”

The Tide (16-9, 7-5) wasn’t the first, but maybe the most effectice in exploiting the Tigers’ biggest weakness — Bama outrebounded the Tigers by 16 in that game.

“Just killed us, on the glass the first time,” Wade said.

And that was with the Tide’s leading rebounder, Donta Hall, on the bench with a wrist injury.

“They have their best rebounder and best shot-blocker back,” Wade said. “It’ll be a huge problem … as it is most nights.”

The Tigers are last in the SEC in most rebounding categories in conference play, with the fewest rebounds (31.2 rpg) and the worst rebounding margin (minus-6).

“They’re the best defensive team in our league,” Wade said. “It’s not just the stats. They’re long and athletic and block a lot of shots. So it’s going to be tough sledding for us to score.

“You have to spread them out. Our best chance is to bang a bunch of threes, hope the 3-ball goes in. Maybe we have saved up a bunch of makes. Time to cash them in.”

But Alabama coach Avery Johnson said LSU has improved considerably since that first meeting, too.

“What we did in our last game against LSU will not work (Tuesday),” he said.

“LSU is a different team than they were last year. They play hard, they’re talented. They have a young freshman point guard in Tremont Waters who can dominate a game by himself.”