re: tOfficial Alabama Basketball Season Thread | 19-15 (10-8) | #BuckleUp

The bigs will be the key to our season I think- if Hall can learn how to defend without fouling that'd help us a lot

It really fricking sucks that Ar'Mond turned out to be a bust. I really thought he could not only be a good 3-point shooter, but maybe a slasher at guard and be able to take it to the rim.

Really makes me hate that Ferguson decommitted and left the way he did. Who knows what this team looks like with him.

I am tempering my expectations because a lot of them have to do with Giddens and something out of Nick King, but there should be a lot to like next year.

I mean, think of it this way. It is the 2017 team, minus : Collins, Taylor, Hale, Olaniyan ; plus Sexton, Petty, Giddens, King (and the other freshmen).

I just don't see anyway that team is worse than this team, and this team will win 16-17 games. There are going to be a bunch of veteran dudes on that team next year to go along with the young guys. Norris, Giddens, AJ Jr, King, Hall, Key, Ingram will all have at least 1 year of big boy ball experience.

It all depends on how the skillsets mesh, but I fully expect to be a borderline Top 25-30 team next season, win 22-25 games and make the tournament somewhere between a 6-10 seed (non-last 4 in). Maybe that is too heavy an expectation, but I don't think it is unfair.

I think Avery will be able to get a lot out Sexton. I mean Retin was on the bench under Grant, and Avery made him all SEC

They shot 42 free throws...that is all

Maybe it's just me, but I think we've seen the last of King. Even if we haven't I doubt he lives up to the hype and can be a big contributor like we hope. Seems so raw and wild with his shots.

Hopefully Giddens can be the inside scoring presence we all hope for. Taylor cannot defend the paint and is useless scoring, unless it's a right hook.

Alabama and Auburn both hit 24 FGs each. They still won by 20. Auburn isn't that good (although they were really good today), the difference was just they had 42 FTs to our 19. They hit more FTs than we attempted. That's ridiculous. Then at the end they hit a couple of 3s, we gave up, and the floodgates opened. I'm not gonna blame this loss on just the refs or just our bad play, it was both. We just need to make sure to beat Auburn at home. If we get swept, Avery will be 1-3 against them. I'm pretty confident we will win at home though, we usually have a pretty good (sometimes sold out) crowd.

I've seen some of our fans complain when people say we need a smaller arena. Well it works for Auburn. They rarely lose at home, they beat us at home every time, and they upset Kentucky there last year. It's a small arena that gets very loud and intimidating. It only holds 9k, but imagine one that's like 12k....we could possibly sell that out every game and it would be loud.

Also, I hate hearing people say "we're gonna be young next year so don't expect much". All the blue blood schools get one and done players who are freshmen every year and win titles. If we ever want to get on that level, we better get to the point where we comfortably make the tourney. I'm not saying we should win a title next year, but we don't need to even hear the world bubble. With how bad the SEC is, we should finish in the top 4 of the SEC and make the tourney with no problem.

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It only holds 9k, but imagine one that's like 12k

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My thoughts exactly. 12k crammed into a smaller, more intimate space would be very intimidating and LOUD! Leave the big arenas for the NBA. Even when our crowd gets loud and into games its just blah most of the time. The students have shitty seats still. Imagine if they were right on top of the action. They'd fill that place up. Granted the product on the floor has to improve.