re: Alabama Basketball Non-Conference Schedule

Appreciate Alabama_Fan posting the video. It’s a 45 minute video and I definitely encourage watching it all, but for those who can’t I’ll sum up the parts I found most interesting

-Says he always wanted to coach college basketball growing up and goes into detail about getting the job with Bob Hurley. It was interesting that Dan basically gave him the job on Bob’s staff because he already had Preston Murphy on staff and they covered the same recruiting ground.

- Talks about when Byrne flew out and offered. His agent told him this was a place he could win and he should accept

-Says Byrne is the best AD in the country and our entire athletics staff and department, president, and board are fantastic.


-Didn’t know or expect to end up loving Alabama as much as he does. Loves the people, weather. Daughter is about to graduate UA, another daughter graduating HS locally, and an 8th grade daughter that plays travel volleyball with DeBoer’s daughter


-Admits he’s intrigued by possibly coaching in the NBA because it’s the highest level. Says he’s never been offered and it’s a bad time right now because of his family. Says he has a lot more winning to do before.


-Doesn’t feel like he needs to go anywhere else to win at the highest level of college. Says things could always change and we’re entering this new age of revenue sharing so you never know, but he believes in our ability to adapt. This made me a little sad just the mention of it. He was directly asked about it and the best part about coach is how up front he is about everything and was pretty much saying no, but damn it we better do whatever it takes.


-The 23 sweet 16 loss was the toughest loss of his career. Says multiple times that was the best team.


Talks about the current team a good bit as well, but it’s the usual stuff he says. Good listen and great insight to how Oats thinks. Always awesome to hear him boost up the whole athletics program. You can tell he really loves it here.


I think it’s about time to build the arena.

Line flipped. AZ -1.5 now

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Line flipped. AZ -1.5 now

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Big swing this late. Someone out hurt?

Thanks for doing that summary. Interesting stuff.

He didn’t say too much. Said the crowd was great in Birmingham. Echoed a lot of stuff we know like we have to get better at boards. Said he wants us getting 40% of our own misses and outrebounding the other team by 5(which seems…lofty lol)

Seemed to regret not playing Bethea. Said he went with guys that he knows know the system as he’s still building trust with the newcomers but that Bethea will get lots of chances to build that trust(seemed to hint around getting him a lot of run while some of our injured guys sit for a while)


Without being asked about it he did say “I could’ve called a time out on the run. But the guys do have to play harder as well” do mildly less defiant than Saturday

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Without being asked about it he did say “I could’ve called a time out on the run. But the guys do have to play harder as well” do mildly less defiant than Saturday

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That’s about the same conviction he had after the last time he answered it with “play harder” a few years ago (may have even been a tournament game). Nothing will change…he literally doesn’t understand it.

To be fair to Nate, if he calls a timeout to stop another team's run it means we have to try and inbound the ball when play resumes, which probably means either a 5 second call or giving the ball right back to the other team.

Interesting Kentucky stats:

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Pope knows basketball, specifically offensive basketball. He runs good actions with modern principals. The problem is that he doesn't necessarily have a modern-type of roster. His current frontcourt of Moreno, Garrison, Dioubate, and Jelavic is shooting a combined 9-47 (19%) from three. Dioubate and Jelavic are also not passers. They have a combined 10 assists through 11 games.

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I think he’d be getting a lot of minutes so far, but mostly because Bristow has been limited.

Mo is a bit small to play in the front court and he’s not good enough at shooting to take minutes from anyone in the backcourt on this team. We’d probably play him out of necessity at small ball 4, but that would go out the window once Bristow was healthy or TBB exhibits any desire to rebound

Anyone need tickets for the game tomorrow? I’ve got 2 I won’t be using.