HOW CAN WE FIX TIDE BASKETBALL?

We Start with Ourselves...

The School needs to make a public commitment

Coaching is not the problem, it's a symptom... 

       

   It is so hard to watch this gritty group of players. They lose, but not by much. They win. but not by much.  The difference in Alabama being a great team and an average room is narrow. What’s missing? What is the missing ingredient? I’m convinced the answer is not just to change coaches. That would be the easy way out. To get basketball back on track is not going to be simple. It is going take a full court press by the Athletic Department. Ever since I’ve been old enough to follow the process of the sport of basketball at UA, it has been crystal clear that commitment is lacking. It’s not just because Alabama is a football school. It’s not that the Administration has gone out their way it hurt Alabama basketball. It’s that they have never really taken the sport seriously. Basketball is getting lip service.

       There is one exception to that statement.  That exception was a man named Paul’ Bryant. He went out of his comfort zone and made a decision that basketball was going to matter. Bryant put into motion a process that the SEC had never seen before. He was going to take a football school and try to make it a basketball powerhouse as well.

With the exception of the Rocket Eight, and a few good teams on occasion the University of Alabama had great. They were good enough to be the second best team in the SEC when history is reviewed. There was only one real power in the SEC. Everyone else fought for second place. How one sided was it? How about if Tiger Woods had  never turned pro and then joined your country club? The club championship was done. Everyone else was playing for runner-up. Bryant’s radical new approach would make Alabama relevant for the first time. How did he do that? He decided to take the sport seriously. Not only did he take it seriously, he told everyone else they had to take it seriously.  The man spoke. He lit the candle of a new era of new basketball. He even sat on the bench with the Tide’s first NIT team. He was like a proud new father. He wanted everyone to see that Alabama wasn’t just a football team. The momentum that Bryant ordained lasted through C.M. Newton, Wimp Sanderson, but started to die in Mark Gottfried’s tenure. The explosion that was Alabama basketball was taken for granted. The explosion turned into complacency. Complacency will ultimately turn into failure. The program is starting that long road to failure but our coach is not the program.

It seems to me that when the Tide’s football team is supremely successful the basketball program slides. Bryant wouldn’t allow that to happen on his watch. Neither should this AD. The beast that is Alabama football is the pride of the South. The program turns out money it seem we actually print the stuff. It’s time that the effort to succeed is given to the basketball program. We can hire all the new coaches we’d like. That is the short term approach and is doomed to failure.  The long term approach is needed. Hire the best people possible to promote the basketball team with the same vigor as football. It is going to cost some real money. We have a lot of real money right now. If we don’t act this time we will continue to see the fall of Alabama basketball. It’s not just the coaching. It’s providing the coaches with everything necessary to succeed.

       That starts with a state of the art place to play the game. The building will have only two purposes. Number one is to have a place to showcase our basketball team The Second? It will be the place where we will start hanging banners year after year. This new facility needs to be a pit. It needs to be an arena take gives the Tide a real edge. Seats need to be next to the floor. All the seats need to be close to the floor. That’s possible with modern architecture and engineers. You don’t put so many seats away from floor you just make the configuration more vertical. We don’t need 15,000 seats. We need around 12,000. And it needs to put any other facility in the nation to shame. Don’t tell me we can’t do that. We can do that in a heartbeat.  It’s just that most people don’t care whether it happens or not. Alabama is close to having the worst arena in the SEC. Also ad the fact that Alabama fans are pretty passive. Success isn’t going too guaranteed in anything just because the name ALABAMA is on the uniforms. We learned that the hard way in football. Today we have the best football facilities in the world. If someone builds something better than us, we just build over the old, and have the best whatever immediately. Nothing is allowed to be second rate in football. We need to treat hoops the same. We can do that in basketball, and not detract from football That means finding someone who has a vision of the future by looking back at the past. Look back and see what Coach Bryant wanted Alabama to have. Look at our tools.

We have school jets. We have people who will let us use their personal jets. Alabama’s recruiting base is too small. That is in the box thinking. Our recruiting base can be the entire world. I’ve been all over the world, and basketball is exploding. China, Europe, Australia, and anywhere else they put up hoops. We can do something that no one else can afford to do. We could literally have the best teams in any sport to choose.  It won’t k with an AD locked in the past. I’m not saying Battle is that way. Truthfully, we don’t know exactly what he is or what he believes to be important except for football. Our state sucks in all most everything. The one shining exception is sports. That is this State’s claim to fame. There is no reason why basketball can’t be great as well. We just have to believe and desire it to be possible. We don’t do that. We whine and cry like mama’s boys. We criticize and blame. We can be nasty and mean spirited. We can hide behind screen names and be disgusting. Where a lot of people look at our basketball team as a failure, some of us see it as an opportunity. You can scream “fire the coach” all you want. Grant is a good coach. He doesn't have enough resources to get it done right. So how long has the slow decent into nothingness been going on?  You look back at the last couple of decades and come to your own conclusion. 

 You give our coach the facility, the ability to fly recruits into TTown like rock stars, and a real commitment to the future, and I’ll show you championships. Otherwise, we’ll be average. We scream at the coaches, the AD, and anything remotely possible connected with our team. Here’s one place we can start: We can quit being such horrible fans. We are horrible fans. 60% of our posters make it one or two games a year. So many posts are negative and show fundamental lack of hoops it is laughable. It’s also the time of year when the football forums slow down, so people flip over to basketball. They like to complain. Go back to football forums and complain about why our defense has become a porous a Swiss cheese. And for heaven’s sake, show a little class and quit making personal insults to our players and disrespect for our coaches. Step up to help and quit running off recruits with childish posts.