Nate Oats has built Alabama into one of the best and most consistent basketball programs in the country over the last five seasons. During that time span, the Crimson Tide has won two SEC regular season titles, two SEC Tournament titles, made the Sweet 16 three times, and advanced to the Final Four for the first time in school history last year.
It's a shame, then, that the basketball program that stands among the nation's elite doesn't have the home-court advantage befitting that of a high-level program. Instead, Coleman Coliseum is one of the least intimidating atmospheres in the SEC and does little to energize and motivate the players on the court.
There have been exceptions when the environment at Coleman has been truly great. It'll likely be fantastic when Auburn comes to Tuscaloosa in a few weeks. I remember seven years ago being inside Coleman for the much hyped Collin Sexton vs. Trae Young matchup and it being a raucous environment.
Perhaps the best crowd in Coleman history - or at least in recent history - was a random Tuesday night game against Missouri in January of last year. Icy road conditions kept out-of-town fans from traveling to Tuscaloosa and Greg Byrne and the athletic department made the decision to expand the student seating inside Coleman. It created a loud, rapturous home crowd for the Crimson Tide as Alabama blew out Missouri 93-75.
That, my friends, is the key to what has to happen to make Coleman an environment that other teams fear playing in.
Alabama sure could have used energy and juice from the crowd when it fell flat against Ole Miss at home two weeks ago. The team came out with little energy and the crowd responded with similar lethargy.
In Saturday's win over Vanderbilt, even with what looked to be close to a capacity crowd, the arena sounded silent on TV. Too many fans in a position to impact the game by being rowdy instead were sitting on their butts and clapping like they were attending the Masters.
A lot of people will point to Coleman being an antiquated venue and the need to speed-up the process of building the new arena, which was announced three years ago now but has seen little movement due to rising construction costs.
While a new arena would be great and would solve some issues, Coleman itself is not the problem, contrary to the widespread belief. The problem is with the seating arraingment and the students being tucked away in the corner and having zero influence on an entire side of the floor.
The student section is full for every game now. The work done - spearheaded by the late Luke Ratliff - to get the student section to what it is now has been incredible. They show up early, they're loud, and they have the ability to create an even better home-court advantage for the Crimson Tide if they are moved onto the floor.
Byrne is a smart guy. He's one of the best Athletic Directors in the business. This is not telling him something he doesn't know or hasn't thought about. I know it's not as easy as just doing it because you're going to piss off some fans with deep pockets who contribute a lot of money to the University.
The majority of the fans sitting at center-court are season ticket holders in multiple sports. The majority of them aren't all that passionate about basketball, though, and buy the tickets just to increase their points for priority postseason football considerations.
I know that's not an easy conversation to have. Move them anyway. They'll get over it.
Any true fan of Alabama athletics wants the team to have as good of a home-court environment as possible. That helps the team have success on the court. And Alabama will never have the same kind of home-court advantage as teams like Kentucky, Tennessee, and yes, Auburn, has with the current layout of Coleman.
A new arena would be great, but Oats would rather have a healthy NIL budget. I'm good with that, too. We can fix Alabama's homecourt advantage with a small change inside Coleman instead.