In honor of the start of Tide basketball, we introduce Alabama student and sports junkie Marisa Martin, who sent us a look at the upcoming hoops season. If you’re interested in writing for BamaHammer, send us samples of your writing and experience. –TonyOrlando
March 11, 2012 is Selection Sunday, the day schools around the country tune in to ESPN to see if they will be playing in the Big Dance. As we look at the upcoming season, the ultimate goal is to be playing on April 2 in the National Championship in New Orleans, Louisiana.
As any good coach would tell you we must take one game at a time, and our focus is on tonight’s game against North Florida. Tipoff is at 7 pm in Alabama’s Coleman Coliseum where the Crimson Tide have won 22 straight games.
Last season expectations were high, and this season they are even higher as Alabama returns 53 percent of their player minutes from last year, and add three ESPN Top 100 recruits to the already stacked roster.
Alabama lost seniors Chris Hines (28 MPG), Charvez Davis (28 MPG), Senario Hillman (20 MPG), and Justin Luquire (2 MPG) and will have to live without Andrew Steele (18 MPG), Kendall Durant (9 MPG), Jason Carter (6 MPG), and Hunter Jeffery (3 MPG), who left the team for various reasons. With these eight men off the team, sixty percent of the team’s three point shooting will have to be made up as well as forty percent of steals.
Alabama returns senior JaMychal Green (16 points/game), junior Tony Mitchell (15.2 points/game), sophomore Trevor Releford (3.4 assists/game), sophomore Charles Hankerson Jr (2.3 points/game), and junior Ben Eblen (0.9 assists/game).
To counter the losses, Alabama brings in Levi Randolph, Trevor Lacey and Rodney Cooper. Randolph, is a 6- fot-6 guard from Madison, Alabama, and is the 29th-ranked recruit in the country. Lacey is a 6-foot-3 guard from Huntsville ranked 36th. Cooper is a 6-foot-5 player from Phenix City ranked 90th. The Crimson Tide also pick up freshmen Nick Jacobs and Retin Ojomoh Obasohan, as well as a 7-foot sophomore Moussa Gueye and 6-3 junior Keon Blackledge.
After going 25-12 for the season and 12-4 in conference play, and not even being ranked in the final regular season pool, Coach Anthony Grant will try to bring a Tide team ranked 19th in the pre-season to March Madness and prove that football is not the only sport in Alabama.
The Crimson Tide went on to lose to Kentucky 72-58 in the SEC tournament last season, and after being excluded from the NCAA tournament the Tide had to prove themselves in the National Invitation Tournament, losing in the championship game 66-57 to Wichita State.
After everything Tuscaloosa endured in the offseason, and in the wake of a big loss in football to LSU, a great basketball season would boost the city, and Anthony Grant says he is going to try his hardest to bring a NCAA Tournament Championship to Tuscaloosa.
The Crimson Tide have three games on the schedule against AP preseason Top 25 teams: Seventh-ranked Vanderbilt on January 19, at second-ranked Kentucky on January 21, and eighth-ranked Florida on February 14. The first SEC game for Alabama will be on January 7 when the Tide travel to Georgia.
Preseason Facts:
• Since 2001, Alabama has an overall winning percentage of 62.2 percent.
• The Crimson Tide have an average conference finish of 3.6 over the last five seasons. Over the past fifteen the team has an average finish of 3.1.
• Over ten seasons, the Crimson Tide have signed seventeen Top 100 players.
• The average final RPI (last year) of opponents on this year’s schedule is 111.4. This year’s opponent with the highest RPI from last year is Kentucky (5). The opponent with the lowest RPI from last year is Alabama A&M (310).
• The last time Alabama returned more than 61 percent of the team’s statistical production was 2009-2010.
• The Crimson Tide have been in the Preseason AP Poll twenty times since 1948.