55 Years of Watching Tide Basketball...
Coach Grant says "he didn't have them ready"
Before reading any more of this blog you need to understand that I've been watching Alabama basketball for 55 seasons. This season has caused me (the loyal fan) more pain than any season I can remember. There were the early years where winning was not going to happen as often so it was almost a habit to watch the team lose. A win was like finding a 20 dollar bill on the sidewalk. We had some good years with Johnny Dee and the Rocket Eight. Sprinkled in those early days were a few good wins and some pretty good seasons, but not many. Then we started to win, and expect to win.
For older basketball fans it was odd seeing our gym full of rabid fans. These fans would come and go depending on the success of the season. Lucklily for the Tide there was a hard core cadre of maybe 1500 hundred fans who loved Alabama basketball more than football. We went on road trips, ignored the second rate facility now called Coleman Coliseum. In those days everyone had terrible facilities so it didn't matter so much. We used to joke that Georgia had the only basketball arena in America where you took the wind in the second half. Tennessee and Auburn had glorified Quonset huts.
But things got better and schools started building nice facilities. We haven't done that, but at least our arena and dressing rooms look good. The problem with Coleman is that it isn't conducive to watching basketball. It is an all purpose facility in an age where top shelf is the rule. Ole Miss is going to have a great arena next season. Ole Miss? We might do okay if we had a quirky gym like Duke. But we have neither a quirky facility or a top shelf facility. We have a dinosaur with makeup. I know we spent 8 million dollars on a spruce up. That's about what Joan Rivers has probably spent on plastic surgery.
CM gave us a solid foundation and the greatest coach in Alabama basektball history, Wimp Sanderson, took hoops to a whole new level. Wimp is my friend and I have to admit to considerable bias here. Alabama basketball has never recovered from the loss of Wimp Sanderson. I'm not going into the what happened with Hootie Ingram. Alabama has knowningly allowed football and basketball coaches remain for doing what Wimp was accussed of doing. Hootie gutted the basket program like a fisheman would gut a perch on a lake bank. Wimp was becoming to popular, basketball was becoming to big, and successfull for a powerful few men who viewed the basketball sucess as a threat to football. That was all silly but true. The greatest single contribution that Nick Saban has made to Alabama football isn't the two national championships, the millions of dollars of increased income, but was telling the good old boys to go to hell. It was Saban's way or he wasn't coming. I don't always agree with what any coach does, but Saban telling a entitled few to take a long hike off a short pier has been the salvation of Alabama football. That, and Mal Moore finding the courage to let him do it. Most Alabama fans will never know the internal pressure put on Moore about Saban when his demands became known.
Alabama basketball died the day Wimp Sanderson left. We have found coaches to take his job but none to take his place. The cadre begged Moore NOT to give Mark Gottfired one more year. One nice thing about Coach Moore is he always listened. I'll give him that. I told him that not firing Mark and giving him one more season would put whoever became our coach in the shower for five seasons. I remember beseeching Mal one more season might mean the new coach wouldn't succeed until his 5th season. We are still paying for giving Gottfried that one year. I stlll beleive that. The problems that Grant has had this season has not really been with his own recruits. I want to go back on the record in saying that Grant is getting the job done. His first year at Alabama was one of the greatest coaching jobs I've ever seen. It remains his best since he has been at Alabama, and the rest has been sorting out problems all new coaches have.
That is not to say I'm happy with 17 points in the first half at Ole Miss. It wasn't the low output that bothered me. It was the lack of focus by the team. The same occured in the AU game. I believe the truth is that we have some really good players but not enough. Our margin for error is small. Grant has coached teams at VCU and was an assistant coach under Billy D at Florida. Those team scored buckets in bushels. and he can do the same at Alabama. This team seems tentative. They seem unsure of themselves. Yesterday, was a sneak preview of what will happen in the NCAA if we get a trio of refs who call silly tickie tack fouls. Bama cannot flourish unless they can play defense the way they have been allowed to play in the SEC until yesterday. They are going to have to play better offense. Here is the problem that Grant faces. He just doesn't have a better offense since the loss of Tony Mitchell. He has to play offensive under strict control. His teams don't shoot to force the other team to run with him, he plays defense to make the other team run. The last two games we saw what happens if the opponent doesn't take the bait. Ole Miss was not effected by our press and they set up, ran their half court offense, and sliced and diced our half court defense at will. Thank heavens the Rebels missed so many shots in close or we could have been embarrased. The Rebels missed enough free throws to allow us a chance to stay in the game.
Coach said he didn't have the team ready to play. I'm not sure how a team playing for what they are playing for isn't ready to play, with or without a coach. It wasn't that we didn't know what plays the Rebels were running as much as we couldn't stop them. Here's the real deal basketball fans - freshmen are just not going to do with any consistency what they need to do when things get tough. That's why only Green and Releford had much to do with the comeback. Our first year players just disappeared. First year players do that. When the bamabasketball nation was predicting a second coming for this season, some of us said slow down a little. Had the freshmen stepped on the floor and bombed three point baskets like a lake blizzard it might have been different. But they didn't. In my mind we had one freshman, Randolph, who had a good freshman season. It wasn't because of scoring but because of his oveall game. Lacey a five star recruit? You could have fooled me? All the freshman had some good moments, just not enough, and not at the same time.
Lookng back on the regular season we did about as good as possible given the soap operas, the lack of focus at times, and the overall lack of talent this team has. This team wins on effort, defense, and the occasional offensve flurry. They won 20 games because of a coach who can teach defense and understands a magicians use of smoke and mirrors. We might win another couple of games. I doubt that Grant will let them roll over and die. But as a basketball fan of over 50 years I have to say it is tough being a Tide fan. Except for the years of CM late in his Alabama tenure, and some great years under Mr. Plaid, Wimp Sanderson, it seems we are always a player away, just in need of a little of this, or a little of that, to become a great program.Grant needs 2 more seasons to get this fixed. Let's give it to him and support him as he does it. The younger fans don't remember bad times. They don't remember the joke that Tide basketball was at one time. Things are not bad right now, they are frustrating. Frustration is born because of a belief you can succeed. I've seen the flip side. In losing 'Wimp Sanderson we lost our best chance to win a National Champioship. In Anthony Grant I think we've found the chance again. But I'd be lying if I said this roller coaster makes me happy. It has been tough.
Coach Grant says "he didn't have them ready"
For older basketball fans it was odd seeing our gym full of rabid fans. These fans would come and go depending on the success of the season. Lucklily for the Tide there was a hard core cadre of maybe 1500 hundred fans who loved Alabama basketball more than football. We went on road trips, ignored the second rate facility now called Coleman Coliseum. In those days everyone had terrible facilities so it didn't matter so much. We used to joke that Georgia had the only basketball arena in America where you took the wind in the second half. Tennessee and Auburn had glorified Quonset huts.
But things got better and schools started building nice facilities. We haven't done that, but at least our arena and dressing rooms look good. The problem with Coleman is that it isn't conducive to watching basketball. It is an all purpose facility in an age where top shelf is the rule. Ole Miss is going to have a great arena next season. Ole Miss? We might do okay if we had a quirky gym like Duke. But we have neither a quirky facility or a top shelf facility. We have a dinosaur with makeup. I know we spent 8 million dollars on a spruce up. That's about what Joan Rivers has probably spent on plastic surgery.
CM gave us a solid foundation and the greatest coach in Alabama basektball history, Wimp Sanderson, took hoops to a whole new level. Wimp is my friend and I have to admit to considerable bias here. Alabama basketball has never recovered from the loss of Wimp Sanderson. I'm not going into the what happened with Hootie Ingram. Alabama has knowningly allowed football and basketball coaches remain for doing what Wimp was accussed of doing. Hootie gutted the basket program like a fisheman would gut a perch on a lake bank. Wimp was becoming to popular, basketball was becoming to big, and successfull for a powerful few men who viewed the basketball sucess as a threat to football. That was all silly but true. The greatest single contribution that Nick Saban has made to Alabama football isn't the two national championships, the millions of dollars of increased income, but was telling the good old boys to go to hell. It was Saban's way or he wasn't coming. I don't always agree with what any coach does, but Saban telling a entitled few to take a long hike off a short pier has been the salvation of Alabama football. That, and Mal Moore finding the courage to let him do it. Most Alabama fans will never know the internal pressure put on Moore about Saban when his demands became known.
Alabama basketball died the day Wimp Sanderson left. We have found coaches to take his job but none to take his place. The cadre begged Moore NOT to give Mark Gottfired one more year. One nice thing about Coach Moore is he always listened. I'll give him that. I told him that not firing Mark and giving him one more season would put whoever became our coach in the shower for five seasons. I remember beseeching Mal one more season might mean the new coach wouldn't succeed until his 5th season. We are still paying for giving Gottfried that one year. I stlll beleive that. The problems that Grant has had this season has not really been with his own recruits. I want to go back on the record in saying that Grant is getting the job done. His first year at Alabama was one of the greatest coaching jobs I've ever seen. It remains his best since he has been at Alabama, and the rest has been sorting out problems all new coaches have.
That is not to say I'm happy with 17 points in the first half at Ole Miss. It wasn't the low output that bothered me. It was the lack of focus by the team. The same occured in the AU game. I believe the truth is that we have some really good players but not enough. Our margin for error is small. Grant has coached teams at VCU and was an assistant coach under Billy D at Florida. Those team scored buckets in bushels. and he can do the same at Alabama. This team seems tentative. They seem unsure of themselves. Yesterday, was a sneak preview of what will happen in the NCAA if we get a trio of refs who call silly tickie tack fouls. Bama cannot flourish unless they can play defense the way they have been allowed to play in the SEC until yesterday. They are going to have to play better offense. Here is the problem that Grant faces. He just doesn't have a better offense since the loss of Tony Mitchell. He has to play offensive under strict control. His teams don't shoot to force the other team to run with him, he plays defense to make the other team run. The last two games we saw what happens if the opponent doesn't take the bait. Ole Miss was not effected by our press and they set up, ran their half court offense, and sliced and diced our half court defense at will. Thank heavens the Rebels missed so many shots in close or we could have been embarrased. The Rebels missed enough free throws to allow us a chance to stay in the game.
Coach said he didn't have the team ready to play. I'm not sure how a team playing for what they are playing for isn't ready to play, with or without a coach. It wasn't that we didn't know what plays the Rebels were running as much as we couldn't stop them. Here's the real deal basketball fans - freshmen are just not going to do with any consistency what they need to do when things get tough. That's why only Green and Releford had much to do with the comeback. Our first year players just disappeared. First year players do that. When the bamabasketball nation was predicting a second coming for this season, some of us said slow down a little. Had the freshmen stepped on the floor and bombed three point baskets like a lake blizzard it might have been different. But they didn't. In my mind we had one freshman, Randolph, who had a good freshman season. It wasn't because of scoring but because of his oveall game. Lacey a five star recruit? You could have fooled me? All the freshman had some good moments, just not enough, and not at the same time.
Lookng back on the regular season we did about as good as possible given the soap operas, the lack of focus at times, and the overall lack of talent this team has. This team wins on effort, defense, and the occasional offensve flurry. They won 20 games because of a coach who can teach defense and understands a magicians use of smoke and mirrors. We might win another couple of games. I doubt that Grant will let them roll over and die. But as a basketball fan of over 50 years I have to say it is tough being a Tide fan. Except for the years of CM late in his Alabama tenure, and some great years under Mr. Plaid, Wimp Sanderson, it seems we are always a player away, just in need of a little of this, or a little of that, to become a great program.Grant needs 2 more seasons to get this fixed. Let's give it to him and support him as he does it. The younger fans don't remember bad times. They don't remember the joke that Tide basketball was at one time. Things are not bad right now, they are frustrating. Frustration is born because of a belief you can succeed. I've seen the flip side. In losing 'Wimp Sanderson we lost our best chance to win a National Champioship. In Anthony Grant I think we've found the chance again. But I'd be lying if I said this roller coaster makes me happy. It has been tough.
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