phil4bama

Yeah. Michigan did something that’s never been done in the history of the tournament. Teams are 1-50 when they: fail to score 70 points, shoot under 40% from the field, shoot under 15% on 15+ attempts from 3, and lose the rebounding battle. It was 0-50 until Monday night. Now it’s 1-50. Say what you will, Dusty May took FAU to the Final Four and in year 2 in Ann Arbor won a natty in a way nobody ever has. I know they were all transfers and they were paid handsomely but that’s still pretty impressive. May knows how to work the system and he won the title. He’s the basketball version of Cignetti. Now let’s see if he can sustain it.

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According to On3. Aiden Sherrell plans on entering the portal

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Heard a rumor Michigan State has been tampering with him for quite some time. TIFWIW but it will be interesting to see where he lands. Bama is not giving up without a fight.

Dusty May’s Opus

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Over those same four years, head coach Dawn Staley’s program has lost an average of $5.75 million annually — and no deficit was larger than that from FY25. Last season, the Gamecocks’ WBB program was $6.24 million in the red, losing over $600,000 more than it did in FY24.

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So for about $1.5 million more we can put a perennial national championship contender on the floor? I say that tongue in cheek but it does make one wonder if we spent another $500,000 to $750,000 dollars on WBB, how good could we be? If we’re going to lose money anyway, let’s get our moneys worth. Maybe we could knock that trashy bayou bitch Mulkey off her bedazzled perch and be the 3rd best team in the league behind Texas and SC. Money well spent IMHO.

If you want more fannies in the seats to boost attendance, easiest way is to win games. But don’t just win them, win them by playing an entertaining brand of basketball. Have a style that is fun to watch. Oats teams are very entertaining. They get up and down the court, shoot the 3, push the tempo, and emphasize hard hat hustle. So adopt a style, a brand. I’m not saying they should necessarily copy Nate, but you could do much worse. But at least adopt a style that wins and is promotable. It helps attendance, if it’s the right kind and gets girls to the WNBA it helps recruiting, it helps visibility and helps the bottom line.

But this is exactly what’s effed up with the current system. Something has to change or Olympic and non revenue sports are going to become concentrated in a handful of schools. Alabama has consistently had an athletic budget that ranked in the top 5 nationally and usually turned a small profit or broke even. Now we can’t even afford to competitively support our non-revenue sports because we’re scrounging dollars trying to keep football and men’s basketball afloat. If something doesn’t change, in 10 years time non-revenue and Olympic sports will disappear from all but the wealthiest schools. The Texas schools, Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, and a few others will be the only ones fielding teams because they will be the only ones left that can afford a swim program or a women’s basketball program or crew. And that’s just to give the big 2 sports a fighting chance to stay competitive. And eventually, those will succumb to the economic inevitability too. It’s practically unavoidable without changes.

Great! She can recruit. That is a valuable asset to have. But can she coach? From what I can tell this is her first job as the head coach. You can recruit all day long, but if you don’t know how to coach it up its all for naught. Only time will tell. She may turn out to be the next Dawn Staley, but the hire is not exactly a splash.

Any news or leaks or juicy rumors on the women’s search? I know everything will start actually happening tomorrow as most buyouts seem to have April 1 as a step down day. But I also know if we have a target, rumors of that target usually start to leak out about 24 hours before the announcement. Then again, Byrne took great pains to plug all leaks in the athletic department with a vengeance previously.

(No Message)

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I left Bessemer at 7 and moved to Montserrat and later St. Lucia before moving to EL Paso by 10. It was interesting.

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Bless your heart, I didn’t make it out of Bessemer until I was 22.

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They would be fools not to do this. I love Oats but the rock to his scissors is having your tallest player guard the rim and telling the other four guys to stay around the 3-pt line and try to clog potential kick-out lanes.

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And Mara is like having a 7’2” Spanish octopus in the lane. For a big guy, he has some of the quickest hands I’ve ever seen. He contests EVERYTHING and swats at the ball, getting a hand on it more than you would think is possible and he doesn’t pick up fouls. He gets away with a lot of player contact because he makes contact with the ball almost every time. Everyone talks about Yaxel but in their last game, he wasn’t a factor and really disappeared.
My biggest fear is this game is going to resemble the Duke game last year a lot. We had no answer for their big men and I don’t see how we have an answer for Michigan’s unless Allen just goes beast mode and gets some help from Bowen and Williamson and Sherrell has a career game against Mara. Michigan will struggle to contain our back court but the drive and kick out game is not going to be there. They don’t have to collapse on the lane to help out, Mara can protect the rim all on his own. We just have to stay hot from 3 but usually after games like the T Tech game, Bama reverts to the mean and goes ice cold from deep.
I’m not into moral victories but if we stay close and have a real shot in the second half, I will be proud of our guys and consider it progress. I do NOT want to watch another beat down like we took from those Duke pricks to reiterate that Bama hasn’t gotten over the hump from pretty good to can hang with the elites. Gonna be watching and pulling hard for ‘em! Roll Tide!