'Bama hustles past West Alabama 80-49

'Bama plays hard entire game...

The pride of effort shows more potential

     A lot of magazines predicted that West Alabama might win the Gulf South Conference. If that is true then Alabama played well Sunday afternoon. One thing Alabama didn't do was to let up on any part of the floor.  From the opening tip to the game's end the Tide played hard. Any time you hold your opponent under 50 points a team has done a lot of good things. In this case it was to cause 25 turnovers and hold West Alabama to 32% shooting. So if you want to understand how this team intends to win this season it is going to be on defense. The smaller the lineup the better the defense look. I guess we can call it Grant ball or something like that. We are going to play rough. We might be small but we will not timid. We are going try to run a lot of teams into exhaustion.

          I'm not saying we won't keep trying to improve play in the paint. I just don't see any upside for 'Bama in doing so with the level of talent we play. Jacobs is a power forward trying to fit inside. He gives good effort. He cannot make up for lack of height however. He isn't a leaper by any means. He has a nice little baby hook that is hard to stop. But we can't build a game around him in my opinion. Against a Gulf South opponent Alabama's three big men scored a total of six points. That isn't going to get it done with schools like Oregon State and Purdue. I'm not saying we can't beat these teams but it is going to take great shooting, fewer turnovers, and some tremendous defense.

      After being perfect from the line in game one the Tide tossed up 11 bricks against West Alabama. That loses games. It will almost certainly lose a close game. All in all we played pretty good basketball. We have the speed and quickness to press anyone. We don't want to get bogged down in a half court game. If you saw something different sound up and let us know. After we get from NYC next week we will know more. One last thing - Pollard had 9 points, 4 boards, 2 ast, and 2 steals. He got into the flow of the game. It might be an overstatement but we might be as good as Pollard ends up being this season. Or maybe as good as Lacey plays. He looked like a star this afternoon.