re: Alabama Basketball Megathread | 26-7 (16-2)

Just as a purely "take it for what it's worth," ESPN's BPI thing has us going 9-3 over the rest of the year.

They have us with losses at LSU (35% chance of winning), at Oklahoma (38% chance of winning), and at Arkansas (44% chance of winning).

That includes basically a toss-up win at Missouri.

The (mildly) interesting part to me is they seem to really like Oklahoma, which is a team I know nothing about.

Edit: 10-3, not 9-3.

Men - #19 NET
Women - #21 NET

Hot damn

Do we put Herb on Watford? If Herb could keep him from going off, that puts a lot more pressure on Thomas and Smart to have big days in order to out score us.

Big XII isn’t the meat grinder it has been in the past. Kansas, Texas Tech, and Iowa State are all down. Texas and Baylor are very, very good but there’s a definite step down to the second tier. That’s not to say they suck, but instead of 4 or 5 teams that could win their league, it’s Texas and Baylor and everyone else is playing for 3rd. And I’m not sure Oklahoma belongs on the second tier in that league. They’ve beaten #9 WVU at home and lost a close one to #15 T Tech at home. Their record isn’t impressive, they’ve won when they should and lost when they should. I think we can at least give them a helluva game.

My speculation on the Come to Jesus meeting after WKU. We heard all year last year how Q was the best player in practice but he takes the floor this year and looks like he can’t guard a statue and is less than ideal on offense. Petty hadn’t shown up for a game with max effort all season. He looked like maybe he was trying to protect himself. Oats goes off and calls out the effort of the whole team but hones in on those two for their obvious underperformance. It gets heated as these often do and Petty doesn’t like some things that are said and he fires back at Oats. Oats does what he has to do and sits Petty and probably has a private meeting with him to explain himself and clear the air later. Petty thinks about it and realizes Oats is telling the truth and adjusts his game as does Q and the rest of the team. You haven’t seen anybody half-arse it again since. I don’t believe the bullshite about racial epithets as that would have blown up in Oats face and he really doesn’t come across as that kind of guy.

I’m holding my breath to see how this team responds to adversity as they haven’t seen any in a while. That will be the next big test.

You forgot Rojas!
That hard-headed bastard just probably needs to be run out of the gym about once a month.

quote:

---

But I guess we can run with the idea that Oats came out dropping n bombs and Petty and Rojas stood up for the cause and the mean coach suspended them for standing up for what's right.

---

Nah, I think just about everyone with half a brain smelled BS from the jump on that one. I don't know exactly what happened, but i'm very confident that it was nothing like what was being rumored on whatever AU (I think it was AU?) message board it originated from.

Crazy, right?