Have you ever noticed how quicker a trip home is when your team wins. One season we fly back from Arizona and I thought the trip would never end. Ever mile was remembering what happened the day before. Now here we are getting ready to go to Oxford, Ms. I've made this drive where year for a long time. I have many memories of Oxford. Very few are favorable. We are actually debating whether to go or just watch the game on televsion. I'm not sure yet. I have lots of reasons not to go. All of them are valid. Deep inside is that nagging feeling that the drive back will seem an eternity.
On paper it seems to me the Tide should win this game. Odd thing saying an Alabama golf team should win a road game. For the past several years road trips was like having a blind date with a fat and ugly girl. Your best friend set up such a date because his own wife has this cousin that couldn't make it through a TSA inspection for lots of reason. You know you have to go out with her, endure it, smile, and say goodnight. You then run to your car as fast as you can with some kind of belief that your mind can erase them memory of the night out of self defense. That's what it has been like on the vast majority of trips to play Ole Miss. At least they don't waive those rebel battle flag and play Dixie every two minutes. I have to say I'll miss Colonel Sanders brother, and I can' imagine what the Black Bear will look like. Only in a state filled with such a racist past could people select a new mascot with the name black in title. I'm just sayin...
So today around 3 at CST time the Tide will tip off against the disappointing Ole Miss Rebels. Basketball has always been a fairly popular sport at Ole Miss. The Rebels have had a couple of pretty good players on their rosters including Johnny the Gunn Neumann was a great player. They also had a friend of mine, Sean Tuohy. Sean as the Ole Miss player who sat on the rim after Ole Miss won an improbable SEC Tournament. He's better know today for being married to Sandra Bullock and was in the Blind Side. Not really, but you know what I mean.
No doubt Ole Miss basketball has come a long way. At one time the were just a pit stop in the SEC. It was a place where your team could study history up close and personal because Oxford was like going back fifty years. I am an Ole Miss fan. My family grew up in Mississippi and you have to choose over there like here about which school you follow. There is the Southern Mississipi option but the Rebels and Bulldogs pretend that Hattisburg is in Alabama or something.
Today, Alabama can take one giant leap toward winning the SEC Crown outright, and making the NCAA field. Most of us are wondering exactly what the team's mental attitude will be after the Auburn game? Ole Miss has lost two straight SEC games, but have been a very good team in the Tad Pad. What is it with these Mississippi schools and their basketball arenas? The hump? The Tad Pad? Although I remember there was a short lived efffort to refere to Coleman as the Plaid Palaces. Derisively, a lot of fans called Auburns facitlity as "the curtain."
It is with historical background that Alabama travels westward to play the University of Ole Miss. Times have changed. Bama has a new head coach. He stern disciplinian and great chalk board coach who teaches that defense is the road less traveled to victory. He happens to be black, but that is of no real importance. Grant might know about the racial history of Mississippi but he learned in books.
The only thing that is black on Grants mind is how black a day the team will endure if the Tide losess. With Florida coming up next week and a possible loss to the other best team in the SEC all the bubble talk with resume. The bubbled busted cospiracies will abound. Grant is going to place an inordinate amount of time and focus on today's game. Another road will will soidify the Tide's NCAA hopes, but more than that a win will likely assure an SEC championship whether or not Alabama beats Florida next week or not.
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