Bama game this Saturday

Now that football is over, I will try to post more on the hoops team, although not as much as last year because quite honestly, this team is really hard to watch. I have watched them play several games thus far on TV-part of the Cal game, part of the ND game, almost all of the Colorado and GT game, SCal game, Mercer game and Winthrop game. This team has a truly gifted player in Caldwell-Pope, two pretty solid guards in Robinson and Ware, an improving but still inconsistent Donte' Williams, a much improved Vincent Williams, a steady and solid Connor Notle, Nemanja is a decent looking prospect. Put it all together and you have an athletic team but one that has limited scoring ability. We have very little low post ability, DWilliams as I mentioned is much improved but he is pretty much all we got. Nemanja is a pretty big kid but he is more perimeter oriented. Our best rebounder, Marcus Thornton is out with a bad knee. My point being, this team is going to struggle to be the upper level SEC teams but should be pretty competitive with the average or below average SEC teams. As it stands now, the following appear the best of the SEC-
Upper tier
UK
UF
Miss State
Bama

Mid tier
Ark
Vandy (they are upper tier but have played mid so far)

Lower tier
UGA
LSU
Miss
AU
SC
UT

I would say we have a shot to win 5-6 conference games this year, if we get to 8, Fox will have done a very good job. But, if we could somehow win that opener, it might be possible to get to 8 wins. We have two games with SC and UT, we get Miss and Ark at home, have LSU and AU on the road. So you figure we lose both UK and UF games, lose to Miss St on the road, that is 5 losses. Say we lose to SC and or UT on the road-that puts us at 6. We always lose at Vandy, that is 7, so there you go. You feel confident in saying we have 7 guaranteed losses to start the year. That makes games like Sat against Bama huge to me because if you can steal a game at home against an upper level team, you might also find a way to sweep SC or UT. I would have to say though, we have not played horribly away from home, beating SCal on the road, losing to CU by only two, we beat ND on a neutral floor, our worst loss was the HORRIBLE loss to GT.

SO, we have Bama coming to town fresh off a 25 point win over GTU in Philips arena. Bama was the team that was competing with us last year for a spot in the NCAA, we got the nod over them despite the fact they beat us twice, once in Tuscie and once at the SEC tourney. This team is likely better than that team and we are obviously not nearly as good. They are 11-3 only losing at K-State, vs Georgetown and Dayton. Gtown and K-State are nationally ranked as were the Tide earlier in the season. They are led by JaMychal Green who averages 15pts and nearly 7 rebouds a game, he was hard for our bigs to handle last year-will be even tougher this year. Tony Mitchell is also averaging 15pts a game and 7 boards a game, followed by the very quick PG Trevor Releford who is at 12pts. Andrew Steele is at 9pts a game and is a really clutch guard and is just back from injury. They have a very deep bench, with 8 guys getting 18 minutes a game or more-I throw Steele into that group of 8 because he will be getting that much time when he is back to 100%. Bama is not a great three team, and their big guys don't shoot FT's the greatest but this team plays VERY strong defense and they will have a big size/experience advantage on us for sure.

I look for Bama to try to go down low to Green and Mitchell, get fouls or easy buckets and then play solid perimeter D on us-they know we tend to live or die by the three. They have some pretty solid guards and Robinson will NOT have the quickness advantage of Releford, that will something he will have to adjust to. They have a very athletic team, it will be very difficult for us to get quality shots and score tomorrow. We MUST be solid on D and REBOUND the ball-they make a living out of crashing the boards and getting mulitple shots-rebounding is an area we have struggled at times. I really don't like this matchup, this team matches our athletic ability and just has more talent. It will take a great effort from our team to keep this close and find a way to win. Again, defense and rebounding are two areas of the game that are all about effort and intensity-if we can do both well, hopefully it will allow us to stay in the game. If you are in the game late, you always have a shot to win and that is what we have to hope for tomorrow. Tip is 7p and will be televised on Fox sportsnet.

Hope you all have a great weekend. Go Dogs an Go Falcons on Sunday.