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"Alabama basketball’s ascent into relevance part of university’s master plan"-The Athletic
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:01 am
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:01 am
Alabama Basketball's Ascent into Relevance - The Athletic
The practice gym is available all day, every day. Put your finger on the reader for a scan and in you go. Nate Oats still finds this incredible. There’s even the slightest hint of wonder in his voice, nearly two years into the job as Alabama men’s basketball coach, that his team can work whenever it wants to work. Oats and his staff can examine every shot attempt and tell the shooter how and where he’s missing it, but that technology is arguably less amazing to him than simply having a space where nobody and nothing gets in his way.
At his last stop, midday power-walkers circled the concourse during Buffalo practices. One court in the rec center was supposed to be reserved for hoops at all times but only sometimes was. Players might arrive late at night to shoot, only to discover something like a table tennis tournament complicating the endeavor. “They’d be calling me, ‘Coach, I can’t get on the floor, there’s stuff going on,’ and then I’d be having to call,” Oats says on a drive home in early February. “I don’t have any of those calls here.”
He says he hasn’t heard “no” often during his brief time in Tuscaloosa. For one, Oats didn’t want to be the new guy making demands. Mostly, though, Alabama already had so much. It’s a place fairly defined by how it strives for absence: of need, of want, of insufficiency in all pursuits. The mindset led to the university investing in a years-long and continuing mission to lift itself into the conversation of nationally elite state institutions. Among the ongoing sub-projects in the wider ambition is basketball.
Oats runs the nation’s sixth-ranked team, racing toward March with a propulsive modern offense and elite defense, a rapid rise to national relevance based largely on the premise that what you get out of something is what you put into it. The program has been subsumed into the university’s prime directive. Alabama being good is a tautology, according to Alabama, and basketball is not exempt.
“Our expectation here is to be great in what we do,” athletic director Greg Byrne says, “and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
A few years ago, Alabama set its sight on becoming great at being a university of higher learning. The goal, as the analogy went in a New York Times story published in 2016, was to climb to the same plane as the University of California at Berkeley or the University of Michigan or the University of Virginia. It was a competitive endeavor not unlike what its alums were accustomed to in the realm of college athletics. The school had to build lots of shiny stuff. It had to find and support the best leaders. It had to woo the best talent from all over the country, hoping a record of success would lead to more of that best talent enrolling annually.
The new stuff might be labs and dorms and not weight rooms, the leaders might focus on research grants and not nickel defense packages, and the talent might have superior standardized test scores as opposed to robust star ratings from recruiting services. But the overarching philosophy was familiar. To transform into a destination public university, Alabama had to invest in itself and sell itself aggressively, while creating an experience in Tuscaloosa that lived up to the talk. “If you’re on our campus, we have continually been opening buildings month after month after month over these last few years,” says Dr. Stuart R. Bell, Alabama’s president since 2015. “So when I have alums come in and say, ‘I don’t remember that building being there,’ I’m like, ‘Chances are it wasn’t.'”
Interpreting and debating the results may be best left to the academics. But per school figures, Alabama has spent $1.61 billion on major construction projects since 2015, creating 2.55 million gross square feet of space on campus. It has broken its own record for external funding for research for seven consecutive years, and the number of full-time faculty has increased by 14 percent since 2015. The school ranked fifth nationally in the number of National Merit scholars (796) enrolled in 2019. While it might sound like material best left for glossy brochures or those reverent commercials rolling during televised athletic events, effects do follow cause. Bell says Alabama has roughly 42,000 applications for roughly 7,000 spots in the incoming freshman class.
“To be the best requires something different today than it did five years ago, and it’ll be something a little different five years from now,” Bell says.
The practice gym is available all day, every day. Put your finger on the reader for a scan and in you go. Nate Oats still finds this incredible. There’s even the slightest hint of wonder in his voice, nearly two years into the job as Alabama men’s basketball coach, that his team can work whenever it wants to work. Oats and his staff can examine every shot attempt and tell the shooter how and where he’s missing it, but that technology is arguably less amazing to him than simply having a space where nobody and nothing gets in his way.
At his last stop, midday power-walkers circled the concourse during Buffalo practices. One court in the rec center was supposed to be reserved for hoops at all times but only sometimes was. Players might arrive late at night to shoot, only to discover something like a table tennis tournament complicating the endeavor. “They’d be calling me, ‘Coach, I can’t get on the floor, there’s stuff going on,’ and then I’d be having to call,” Oats says on a drive home in early February. “I don’t have any of those calls here.”
He says he hasn’t heard “no” often during his brief time in Tuscaloosa. For one, Oats didn’t want to be the new guy making demands. Mostly, though, Alabama already had so much. It’s a place fairly defined by how it strives for absence: of need, of want, of insufficiency in all pursuits. The mindset led to the university investing in a years-long and continuing mission to lift itself into the conversation of nationally elite state institutions. Among the ongoing sub-projects in the wider ambition is basketball.
Oats runs the nation’s sixth-ranked team, racing toward March with a propulsive modern offense and elite defense, a rapid rise to national relevance based largely on the premise that what you get out of something is what you put into it. The program has been subsumed into the university’s prime directive. Alabama being good is a tautology, according to Alabama, and basketball is not exempt.
“Our expectation here is to be great in what we do,” athletic director Greg Byrne says, “and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
A few years ago, Alabama set its sight on becoming great at being a university of higher learning. The goal, as the analogy went in a New York Times story published in 2016, was to climb to the same plane as the University of California at Berkeley or the University of Michigan or the University of Virginia. It was a competitive endeavor not unlike what its alums were accustomed to in the realm of college athletics. The school had to build lots of shiny stuff. It had to find and support the best leaders. It had to woo the best talent from all over the country, hoping a record of success would lead to more of that best talent enrolling annually.
The new stuff might be labs and dorms and not weight rooms, the leaders might focus on research grants and not nickel defense packages, and the talent might have superior standardized test scores as opposed to robust star ratings from recruiting services. But the overarching philosophy was familiar. To transform into a destination public university, Alabama had to invest in itself and sell itself aggressively, while creating an experience in Tuscaloosa that lived up to the talk. “If you’re on our campus, we have continually been opening buildings month after month after month over these last few years,” says Dr. Stuart R. Bell, Alabama’s president since 2015. “So when I have alums come in and say, ‘I don’t remember that building being there,’ I’m like, ‘Chances are it wasn’t.'”
Interpreting and debating the results may be best left to the academics. But per school figures, Alabama has spent $1.61 billion on major construction projects since 2015, creating 2.55 million gross square feet of space on campus. It has broken its own record for external funding for research for seven consecutive years, and the number of full-time faculty has increased by 14 percent since 2015. The school ranked fifth nationally in the number of National Merit scholars (796) enrolled in 2019. While it might sound like material best left for glossy brochures or those reverent commercials rolling during televised athletic events, effects do follow cause. Bell says Alabama has roughly 42,000 applications for roughly 7,000 spots in the incoming freshman class.
“To be the best requires something different today than it did five years ago, and it’ll be something a little different five years from now,” Bell says.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:02 am to SummerOfGeorge
Which brings us to the men’s basketball program, and the ongoing efforts to budge into conversations about the best.
It hasn’t often come close to that. Alabama has had empirically good years, notably a period under the watches of C.M. Newton and then Wimp Sanderson from the mid-1970s through the early ’90s featuring 12 NCAA Tournament appearances and seven runs to the Sweet 16. The Crimson Tide have reached one Elite Eight, in 2004, and have never been to the Final Four. It’s not a place without history, but it is a place that’s not enjoyed historically great men’s basketball moments. It has not been, to stretch the analogy, Michigan or Virginia in this regard.
The current group is taking its shot at changing the paradigm; if you don’t remember Alabama being this good, chances are it wasn’t. Hence the contract extension delivered to Oats, 46, just last week, before his second year at the helm is even complete, with the deal now running through the end of the 2027 season and lifting his compensation clear of the $3 million a year mark. A nod to the deft button-pushing Oats and his staff have done in 2020-21, for sure, but also a statement about the investment the school is making in its expectations of excellence. “When we hired (Oats),” Byrne says, “I said we’ll continue to grow you and grow the program as time goes on, and that’s what we’re committed to doing.”
On the floor, the implementation and execution of a free-flowing, analytics-heavy offense aren’t entirely beside the point; getting a group to do what you want, and do it well, requires a coach to be good at his job. But Alabama played fast and shot a lot of 3s last year and is doing both of those things again this year, if only slightly more effectively (24th in adjusted efficiency this season versus 37th last year). It’s understandable why people would conclude this is the reason the Crimson Tide have won 18 of 23 games and 13 of 14 in the SEC and have a commanding lead atop the league, but it undersells how deftly Oats and his staff grew the operation into a national contender.
This is the people variable in the equation: Coaches made decisions, strategic and otherwise, that might’ve submarined the effort had the strategies failed or broke badly. They didn’t. And here Alabama is.
Of all the endeavors that fall into this category, transforming Alabama into an elite defensive unit is the most consequential, and oddly the part for which Oats doesn’t get quite enough credit. The Crimson Tide ranked 114th in defensive efficiency in his first season; they started this week ranked second nationally in that department. It’s not a philosophical accident. Oats’ best Buffalo teams were edgy and unrelenting on that end of the floor, and the raft of long, interchangeable pieces on the Alabama roster suggested something similar could be done in 2020-21. This requires buy-in, though. And it’s much easier to get kids on board to play fast and shoot quickly than it is to persuade them to get in a stance.
Some of it is attributable to savvy personnel maneuvering. Landing forward Jordan Bruner as a grad transfer was about locating and inserting a linchpin on the defensive end as much as anything; Yale was 18 points better per 100 possessions with the 6-foot-10 Bruner on the floor in 2019-20. Some of it is simply reinforcing the principle during offseason preparation, like any coach in any program might. “There would be days where it would just be all defense,” sophomore guard Jaden Shackelford says. There are persnickety film sessions in which Oats and the staff identify poor rotations and missed assignments. “Just because someone missed,” junior guard Keon Ellis says, “doesn’t mean we played good defense.”
But a good part of it, too, was selling a vision. Burrowing into a player’s mind and leaving behind an idea that the player can’t shake. It’s how you turn Jaden Shackelford, Freshman Liability, into Jaden Shackelford, Sophomore Who Likes to Play Defense, with a little help at home from Dad.
In his first season at Alabama, the 6-foot-3 guard had a defensive box score plus-minus of minus-0.2, per Basketball Reference. “Shackelford wasn’t a very good defender last year,” Oats says, “and that might be an understatement.” One of the subjects of the standard coach-player debrief last spring was the imperative for Shackelford to become more reliable on that end. Oats framed it in a way to which most former top-100 recruits would respond: It was what Shackelford needed to do to put himself in the best position for a basketball life after college.
At home, while training remotely during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Shackelford made defensive drills a staple of workouts with his father. Improved lateral quickness was a top priority, so the younger Shackelford slid across the floor with weights strapped to him. It says quite a bit about the message Oats was able to drive home; he essentially informed a player that his basketball health depended on drinking more milk, and the player bought it. “You usually don’t go into the gym saying, I’m about to do 50 defensive slides, close-outs, stuff like that,” Shackelford says. “But, I mean, once you do it, it pays off. Trust me.”
Upon Shackelford’s return to campus, the process evolved into more assiduous and pointed film study, and the ability to exploit tendencies as a defender. His goal now is to draw on-ball charges as often as he can, and he wouldn’t be able to accomplish that goal without an intentional approach to preparation. “If I’m closing out to a guard that loves to attack with the ball and re-attack?” the sophomore says. “If he’s a strong right, I’m going to close out, step to the left. If I cut him off, he’s going to drive again and I’m going to take a charge. There’s a lot to it, but at the same time, it’s just guarding your man.”
It hasn’t often come close to that. Alabama has had empirically good years, notably a period under the watches of C.M. Newton and then Wimp Sanderson from the mid-1970s through the early ’90s featuring 12 NCAA Tournament appearances and seven runs to the Sweet 16. The Crimson Tide have reached one Elite Eight, in 2004, and have never been to the Final Four. It’s not a place without history, but it is a place that’s not enjoyed historically great men’s basketball moments. It has not been, to stretch the analogy, Michigan or Virginia in this regard.
The current group is taking its shot at changing the paradigm; if you don’t remember Alabama being this good, chances are it wasn’t. Hence the contract extension delivered to Oats, 46, just last week, before his second year at the helm is even complete, with the deal now running through the end of the 2027 season and lifting his compensation clear of the $3 million a year mark. A nod to the deft button-pushing Oats and his staff have done in 2020-21, for sure, but also a statement about the investment the school is making in its expectations of excellence. “When we hired (Oats),” Byrne says, “I said we’ll continue to grow you and grow the program as time goes on, and that’s what we’re committed to doing.”
On the floor, the implementation and execution of a free-flowing, analytics-heavy offense aren’t entirely beside the point; getting a group to do what you want, and do it well, requires a coach to be good at his job. But Alabama played fast and shot a lot of 3s last year and is doing both of those things again this year, if only slightly more effectively (24th in adjusted efficiency this season versus 37th last year). It’s understandable why people would conclude this is the reason the Crimson Tide have won 18 of 23 games and 13 of 14 in the SEC and have a commanding lead atop the league, but it undersells how deftly Oats and his staff grew the operation into a national contender.
This is the people variable in the equation: Coaches made decisions, strategic and otherwise, that might’ve submarined the effort had the strategies failed or broke badly. They didn’t. And here Alabama is.
Of all the endeavors that fall into this category, transforming Alabama into an elite defensive unit is the most consequential, and oddly the part for which Oats doesn’t get quite enough credit. The Crimson Tide ranked 114th in defensive efficiency in his first season; they started this week ranked second nationally in that department. It’s not a philosophical accident. Oats’ best Buffalo teams were edgy and unrelenting on that end of the floor, and the raft of long, interchangeable pieces on the Alabama roster suggested something similar could be done in 2020-21. This requires buy-in, though. And it’s much easier to get kids on board to play fast and shoot quickly than it is to persuade them to get in a stance.
Some of it is attributable to savvy personnel maneuvering. Landing forward Jordan Bruner as a grad transfer was about locating and inserting a linchpin on the defensive end as much as anything; Yale was 18 points better per 100 possessions with the 6-foot-10 Bruner on the floor in 2019-20. Some of it is simply reinforcing the principle during offseason preparation, like any coach in any program might. “There would be days where it would just be all defense,” sophomore guard Jaden Shackelford says. There are persnickety film sessions in which Oats and the staff identify poor rotations and missed assignments. “Just because someone missed,” junior guard Keon Ellis says, “doesn’t mean we played good defense.”
But a good part of it, too, was selling a vision. Burrowing into a player’s mind and leaving behind an idea that the player can’t shake. It’s how you turn Jaden Shackelford, Freshman Liability, into Jaden Shackelford, Sophomore Who Likes to Play Defense, with a little help at home from Dad.
In his first season at Alabama, the 6-foot-3 guard had a defensive box score plus-minus of minus-0.2, per Basketball Reference. “Shackelford wasn’t a very good defender last year,” Oats says, “and that might be an understatement.” One of the subjects of the standard coach-player debrief last spring was the imperative for Shackelford to become more reliable on that end. Oats framed it in a way to which most former top-100 recruits would respond: It was what Shackelford needed to do to put himself in the best position for a basketball life after college.
At home, while training remotely during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Shackelford made defensive drills a staple of workouts with his father. Improved lateral quickness was a top priority, so the younger Shackelford slid across the floor with weights strapped to him. It says quite a bit about the message Oats was able to drive home; he essentially informed a player that his basketball health depended on drinking more milk, and the player bought it. “You usually don’t go into the gym saying, I’m about to do 50 defensive slides, close-outs, stuff like that,” Shackelford says. “But, I mean, once you do it, it pays off. Trust me.”
Upon Shackelford’s return to campus, the process evolved into more assiduous and pointed film study, and the ability to exploit tendencies as a defender. His goal now is to draw on-ball charges as often as he can, and he wouldn’t be able to accomplish that goal without an intentional approach to preparation. “If I’m closing out to a guard that loves to attack with the ball and re-attack?” the sophomore says. “If he’s a strong right, I’m going to close out, step to the left. If I cut him off, he’s going to drive again and I’m going to take a charge. There’s a lot to it, but at the same time, it’s just guarding your man.”
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:02 am to SummerOfGeorge
His total of 1.1 defensive Win Shares in his first 23 games surpassed the 0.6 he amassed in 31 appearances as a freshman, and Shackelford is now a net plus defensively (plus-2.1 in defensive box score plus-minus). A stopper? A lock-down defender who causes opposing guards to go weak-kneed as they bring the ball up the floor? Not really, no. But Oats needed his top offensive option simply to be better on the other end, and now he is, and it’s emblematic of a collective commitment to stopping teams instead of aiming to outrun and outgun them.
This coaching touch is straightforward: Focus on better defense. Act accordingly. It’s decidedly more complicated to assess a situation’s potential to spiral out of control and do a thing that very well could increase the velocity of the spiral and the collateral damage around it.
That’s where Oats found himself after a dispiriting December home loss to Western Kentucky, Alabama’s third of a young season. He had talked about the program having no “BCD” — blaming, complaining, deflecting — and there was instead an abundance of it. At that point, he decided he needed to give one of his best players space to think through whether he wanted to be part of the team.
Suspending John Petty Jr., a 1,000-point scorer and perhaps the Crimson Tide’s top 3-point marksman on a team not lacking them, carried no small amount of risk. Oats conceded Petty might not have been disciplined for his transgressions elsewhere. It was possible that Petty, who considered entry into the NBA Draft last summer, might take his time away to decide to stay away. The group might have reacted poorly. In short, Alabama’s season was put in the balance, on purpose, by Oats. The stakes were high.
Oats just saw the stakes a little differently. “We talked all summer and we worked all fall on culture-building, what our culture was going to be,” he says. “And then it was just off. It was a lot of talk and not enough action.”
Much like persuading a score-first guard to become a reliable defensive cog, Oats sold Petty on the notion that tapping the pause button was the best thing for him. Oats brought Petty’s mother into the discussion. He remained in contact with the player. Petty returned after missing one game, and he’s now Alabama’s second-leading scorer (13 points per game) and leads the team in 3-pointers (56). He watches full games, per Oats, and offers thoughts on Alabama’s keys to winning instead of waiting for the coaches to tell him. In a loss at Oklahoma, Petty was at the scorer’s table, set to check in, as the group on the floor went on a run. At the whistle, Oats couldn’t decide whom to take out. So Petty solved the issue: He told Oats to leave that group on the floor, and he returned to the bench.
“You’re going to have conflict with any organization. It’s a matter of how you respond to it,” Byrne says. “That helped set the tone — we’re not playing favorites, and let’s make sure we’re focused on what the team is trying to accomplish. And everyone has responded very well to it.”
Build whatever you want and stuff the toolbox however you’d like. The human beings holding the tools determine how effectively they’re used. The decisions that defined Alabama men’s hoops this season most likely reinforced for Byrne the conclusion he reached about Nate Oats, people person, during the search process. He pulled a standard stealth-mode gambit and blocked his caller ID when he reached out to some of Oats’ former players, identifying himself only as Greg, Who Likes to Research Coaches. (“Which is true,” Byrne notes.) Still resonating to this day is the feedback from Blake Hamilton, who transferred to Buffalo after one nondescript season at Northern Arizona, entering Oats’ lab as an undersized power forward and emerging as a lead guard who scored 1,004 points in two seasons with the Bulls.
He saw an ability for me to play the game in a way I didn’t know that I could, was how Hamilton put it to Greg Who Likes to Research Coaches, while adding that Oats has stayed in regular contact as the years have passed. “That’s a great sign,” Byrne says. “A special gift of player evaluation.” That much he could vet before the hire. The other standard Byrne was after in the search process was simple: He wanted a ball coach. From his office window, Byrne can see Nick Saban in the mix at football practices, and not surprisingly he figured that to be a model worth replicating in his new men’s basketball coach.
The expectation is to be great, but greatness doesn’t just happen. “Nate’s doing that exact same thing,” Byrne says, referring to Saban’s hands-on approach. “He’s not sitting up above. He’s not sitting on a folding chair watching practice. He’s in the middle of it, working with the kids, working with the assistants. The intensity level is high. He creates a culture to where, by his own actions, hard work is expected. That attitude is contagious.”
So of course the buildings and outsized toolboxes matter. They are a big help in the pursuit of greatness.
This is the inescapable reality of modern college athletics, and arguably a reflection of the modern university ambitions as a whole. As noted by Bell, Alabama welcomes a group of consultants annually who assess the school’s facilities, rating everything from functionality to curb appeal. It’s hard data examined to ensure the university is relevant and sustaining a cutting-edge environment for the faculty, staff and students. A significant benefit of people valuing their time at a school is bringing business back to that school after they leave it. “We want to make sure that they come,” Bell says, “but that they also finish here, that they have a great experience here, and when they leave here they’re going to be recruiting people back here.”
In the smaller context of Alabama men’s hoops enjoying nice perks, there is Shackelford, walking into the athletics facility around 8 p.m and seeing people making meals for those matriculating through the building. “It’s all A-1, top-tier stuff,” he says of the resources on hand. “There’s definitely people that see it as just a football school, and I feel like it’s hard to get a grasp on how much they care about everybody here until you get here.”
This coaching touch is straightforward: Focus on better defense. Act accordingly. It’s decidedly more complicated to assess a situation’s potential to spiral out of control and do a thing that very well could increase the velocity of the spiral and the collateral damage around it.
That’s where Oats found himself after a dispiriting December home loss to Western Kentucky, Alabama’s third of a young season. He had talked about the program having no “BCD” — blaming, complaining, deflecting — and there was instead an abundance of it. At that point, he decided he needed to give one of his best players space to think through whether he wanted to be part of the team.
Suspending John Petty Jr., a 1,000-point scorer and perhaps the Crimson Tide’s top 3-point marksman on a team not lacking them, carried no small amount of risk. Oats conceded Petty might not have been disciplined for his transgressions elsewhere. It was possible that Petty, who considered entry into the NBA Draft last summer, might take his time away to decide to stay away. The group might have reacted poorly. In short, Alabama’s season was put in the balance, on purpose, by Oats. The stakes were high.
Oats just saw the stakes a little differently. “We talked all summer and we worked all fall on culture-building, what our culture was going to be,” he says. “And then it was just off. It was a lot of talk and not enough action.”
Much like persuading a score-first guard to become a reliable defensive cog, Oats sold Petty on the notion that tapping the pause button was the best thing for him. Oats brought Petty’s mother into the discussion. He remained in contact with the player. Petty returned after missing one game, and he’s now Alabama’s second-leading scorer (13 points per game) and leads the team in 3-pointers (56). He watches full games, per Oats, and offers thoughts on Alabama’s keys to winning instead of waiting for the coaches to tell him. In a loss at Oklahoma, Petty was at the scorer’s table, set to check in, as the group on the floor went on a run. At the whistle, Oats couldn’t decide whom to take out. So Petty solved the issue: He told Oats to leave that group on the floor, and he returned to the bench.
“You’re going to have conflict with any organization. It’s a matter of how you respond to it,” Byrne says. “That helped set the tone — we’re not playing favorites, and let’s make sure we’re focused on what the team is trying to accomplish. And everyone has responded very well to it.”
Build whatever you want and stuff the toolbox however you’d like. The human beings holding the tools determine how effectively they’re used. The decisions that defined Alabama men’s hoops this season most likely reinforced for Byrne the conclusion he reached about Nate Oats, people person, during the search process. He pulled a standard stealth-mode gambit and blocked his caller ID when he reached out to some of Oats’ former players, identifying himself only as Greg, Who Likes to Research Coaches. (“Which is true,” Byrne notes.) Still resonating to this day is the feedback from Blake Hamilton, who transferred to Buffalo after one nondescript season at Northern Arizona, entering Oats’ lab as an undersized power forward and emerging as a lead guard who scored 1,004 points in two seasons with the Bulls.
He saw an ability for me to play the game in a way I didn’t know that I could, was how Hamilton put it to Greg Who Likes to Research Coaches, while adding that Oats has stayed in regular contact as the years have passed. “That’s a great sign,” Byrne says. “A special gift of player evaluation.” That much he could vet before the hire. The other standard Byrne was after in the search process was simple: He wanted a ball coach. From his office window, Byrne can see Nick Saban in the mix at football practices, and not surprisingly he figured that to be a model worth replicating in his new men’s basketball coach.
The expectation is to be great, but greatness doesn’t just happen. “Nate’s doing that exact same thing,” Byrne says, referring to Saban’s hands-on approach. “He’s not sitting up above. He’s not sitting on a folding chair watching practice. He’s in the middle of it, working with the kids, working with the assistants. The intensity level is high. He creates a culture to where, by his own actions, hard work is expected. That attitude is contagious.”
So of course the buildings and outsized toolboxes matter. They are a big help in the pursuit of greatness.
This is the inescapable reality of modern college athletics, and arguably a reflection of the modern university ambitions as a whole. As noted by Bell, Alabama welcomes a group of consultants annually who assess the school’s facilities, rating everything from functionality to curb appeal. It’s hard data examined to ensure the university is relevant and sustaining a cutting-edge environment for the faculty, staff and students. A significant benefit of people valuing their time at a school is bringing business back to that school after they leave it. “We want to make sure that they come,” Bell says, “but that they also finish here, that they have a great experience here, and when they leave here they’re going to be recruiting people back here.”
In the smaller context of Alabama men’s hoops enjoying nice perks, there is Shackelford, walking into the athletics facility around 8 p.m and seeing people making meals for those matriculating through the building. “It’s all A-1, top-tier stuff,” he says of the resources on hand. “There’s definitely people that see it as just a football school, and I feel like it’s hard to get a grasp on how much they care about everybody here until you get here.”
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:02 am to SummerOfGeorge
Care is, of course, another word for support, and support is the pleasant way of describing a place’s ability to fulfill its needs by finding ways to pay for them. Much of what Alabama might need to continue along the basketball new-blood trajectory is in place. No one is crowing about the lack of a practice gym. The locker room and weight room and meeting rooms are well-appointed. A fleet of managers is at the ready to help with late-night shooting sessions or even rides to and from the facility. These are probably prerequisites for even starting a conversation about basketball aspirations in 2021. Alabama has taken care of all that.
If there’s a “more,” it takes on the form of the basketball arena. Any program would be wise to direct funds to upgrade its behind-the-scenes spaces or add not-for-public-consumption perks; time spent in a home arena can represent but a relative fraction of an athlete’s existence. But the arena is what everyone else sees. Which is why people always talk about wanting a better arena.
So, yes, there will be a plan to rehab Coleman Coliseum. Byrne understands it’s something that needs to be addressed, and he says the athletic department will do everything it can to reinvest in its success. Such reinvestments, by extension, help keep a coach happy. If Alabama really likes Oats and believes he’s the right guy to steer a program into the top 10 annually, then it’s not a bad idea to fix up the arena. Or hand out extensions early in the relationship. Or to ensure that Oats’ assistants are paid well enough that they’ll only leave Alabama for head-coaching opportunities. “The infrastructure here on developing basketball players is as good a setup as there is,” Byrne says. “That doesn’t mean you don’t continue to evolve, and we’re going to.”
The rest is up to Oats, in every sense.
He’ll have to coach well and keep pressing the right buttons time and again, naturally. But he’d argue player evaluation is the determinative factor to maintaining the course. So far he and his staff have been able to sell the vision to prospective players, having signed two top-100 freshmen out of the Class of 2020 and snagging commitments from the nation’s No. 9 freshman in 2021 (point guard J.D. Davison) and the No. 2 junior college recruit (forward Langston Wilson). But betting on talent alone can be corrosive. Bring in the wrong guys, who are about the wrong things, and the foundation rots. Without naming names, Oats noted he and his staff pulled away from a highly rated Class of 2020 recruit simply because they read his body language and saw how he played and didn’t think his priorities matched theirs.
“You can’t get lazy in recruiting and not do your homework,” Oats says. “I don’t care how highly rated a kid is. You have to do your homework. You can’t take losers in the program and win with them. They’re not all going to be perfect, but you can’t take bad character kids. They’ll ruin the program quickly.”
Otherwise, Alabama is a basketball fit, both in terms of available resources and compatibility with his preferred style of play. Alabama is likewise a lifestyle fit, even if Oats still sounds more like a guy working at the local paper mill in Wisconsin than he does a son of the South. Collectively, it’s an alignment of variables that can convince a guy he has found the right place for him, especially when he sees what’s being built around him.
“There are jobs that have a lot more tradition than Alabama, as far as basketball goes,” Oats says. “But as far as potential goes, I don’t know why you can’t win big here. I don’t see any reason you can’t. There’s nothing holding us back.”
If there’s a “more,” it takes on the form of the basketball arena. Any program would be wise to direct funds to upgrade its behind-the-scenes spaces or add not-for-public-consumption perks; time spent in a home arena can represent but a relative fraction of an athlete’s existence. But the arena is what everyone else sees. Which is why people always talk about wanting a better arena.
So, yes, there will be a plan to rehab Coleman Coliseum. Byrne understands it’s something that needs to be addressed, and he says the athletic department will do everything it can to reinvest in its success. Such reinvestments, by extension, help keep a coach happy. If Alabama really likes Oats and believes he’s the right guy to steer a program into the top 10 annually, then it’s not a bad idea to fix up the arena. Or hand out extensions early in the relationship. Or to ensure that Oats’ assistants are paid well enough that they’ll only leave Alabama for head-coaching opportunities. “The infrastructure here on developing basketball players is as good a setup as there is,” Byrne says. “That doesn’t mean you don’t continue to evolve, and we’re going to.”
The rest is up to Oats, in every sense.
He’ll have to coach well and keep pressing the right buttons time and again, naturally. But he’d argue player evaluation is the determinative factor to maintaining the course. So far he and his staff have been able to sell the vision to prospective players, having signed two top-100 freshmen out of the Class of 2020 and snagging commitments from the nation’s No. 9 freshman in 2021 (point guard J.D. Davison) and the No. 2 junior college recruit (forward Langston Wilson). But betting on talent alone can be corrosive. Bring in the wrong guys, who are about the wrong things, and the foundation rots. Without naming names, Oats noted he and his staff pulled away from a highly rated Class of 2020 recruit simply because they read his body language and saw how he played and didn’t think his priorities matched theirs.
“You can’t get lazy in recruiting and not do your homework,” Oats says. “I don’t care how highly rated a kid is. You have to do your homework. You can’t take losers in the program and win with them. They’re not all going to be perfect, but you can’t take bad character kids. They’ll ruin the program quickly.”
Otherwise, Alabama is a basketball fit, both in terms of available resources and compatibility with his preferred style of play. Alabama is likewise a lifestyle fit, even if Oats still sounds more like a guy working at the local paper mill in Wisconsin than he does a son of the South. Collectively, it’s an alignment of variables that can convince a guy he has found the right place for him, especially when he sees what’s being built around him.
“There are jobs that have a lot more tradition than Alabama, as far as basketball goes,” Oats says. “But as far as potential goes, I don’t know why you can’t win big here. I don’t see any reason you can’t. There’s nothing holding us back.”
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:19 am to SummerOfGeorge
Great article ...thanks for posting
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:19 am to SummerOfGeorge
Nice article.
Since they mentioned Alabama striving to compete with UVA, Michigan, etc academically... I wonder at what point they cap enrollment and start getting more selective? I was a freshman in 2012 and even since then things are incredibly different. Can't imagine the culture shock from people who were there before Nick Saban.
Since they mentioned Alabama striving to compete with UVA, Michigan, etc academically... I wonder at what point they cap enrollment and start getting more selective? I was a freshman in 2012 and even since then things are incredibly different. Can't imagine the culture shock from people who were there before Nick Saban.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:20 am to RTN
quote:
Can't imagine the culture shock from people who were there before Nick Saban.
As one of those people from the years right before Saban, it's certainly a completely different place - structurally and population wise.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:31 am to SummerOfGeorge
A really good article.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 8:57 am to SummerOfGeorge
quote:
As one of those people from the years right before Saban, it's certainly a completely different place - structurally and population wise
I kinda feel bad for the kids these days being robbed of the experience of living in some cheap shite heap of an apartment a few blocks from the Strip where the only redeeming feature is the fact that it is a few blocks from the Strip. They can obviously still live there, but now it seems like most of the cheap stuff has been torn down and replaced with fancy pants expensive condos and townhouses where you not only get your own bathroom, but also a private balcony and walls thick enough that your neighbors aren't aware of every time you get laid.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 9:11 am to SummerOfGeorge
quote:
As one of those people from the years right before Saban, it's certainly a completely different place - structurally and population wise
Just think about what it looks like to us old folks!! I stepped off of that campus in December of 1993 with a student enrollment of around 19,500. That place changes EVERY SINGLE TIME I go back!!!
Posted on 2/24/21 at 9:16 am to Robot Santa
They can still experience the glory of Paty Hall.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 9:29 am to UAgrad93
I'll bet summers aren't even boring there anymore.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 9:35 am to Robot Santa
quote:
I kinda feel bad for the kids these days being robbed of the experience of living in some cheap shite heap of an apartment a few blocks from the Strip where the only redeeming feature is the fact that it is a few blocks from the Strip.
100%. I was lucky enough to have a place just like that my last two years in Tuscaloosa. It's recently been demolished to build another luxurious condo/apartment. The place was a major dump, but it was only a 10 minute walk to all of my classes. More importantly (at the time), it was less than a 5 minute walk to Red Shed, Houndstooth, and the Bear Trap.
I wouldn't have been able to afford a place in a prime location like that these days. Man, reading some of these posts makes me miss my days at the University.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 9:43 am to UAgrad93
quote:
Just think about what it looks like to us old folks!! I stepped off of that campus in December of 1993 with a student enrollment of around 19,500. That place changes EVERY SINGLE TIME I go back!!!
Similar situation for me as well as my first semester was your last semester (Dec 1993). I remember the completion of Alston Hall, the Brunos Business library, and the original Ten Hoor parking deck being a big deal in my time there but every freshman since the mid 2000s has experienced at least twice as much construction as that by comparison.
The campus is unrecognizable (in a good way imho) compared to when we were in school. At this point facility wise a new basketball arena is the one glaring missing piece.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 9:44 am to Cousin Key
quote:
I wouldn't have been able to afford a place in a prime location like that these days.
Absolutely not. The mad rush to find a place during that first window when the rental companies started accepting down payments was one of the low key best and worst parts of school.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 9:46 am to LovetheLord
quote:
I'll bet summers aren't even boring there anymore.
Summer was the GOAT
- 10 AM class
- lunch and lounge, maybe some schoolwork depending on the class (or the ole online "class" was a good 11AM -2 PM filler)
- tee time at 3 PM right when twilight rate kicked in
- dinner at Pepitos
- pitchers and the Braves game at Tooth
- Booth and/or Gallettes until 12 AM or 4 AM depending on the night/time of summer
This post was edited on 2/24/21 at 9:49 am
Posted on 2/24/21 at 10:03 am to SummerOfGeorge
Wow, great read, and very encouraging from many aspects. I really enjoy these types of long-form articles.
How do you like The Athletic? Worth a subscription overall? I've thought about it in the past but never pulled the trigger.
How do you like The Athletic? Worth a subscription overall? I've thought about it in the past but never pulled the trigger.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 10:06 am to SummerOfGeorge
Pepito's, Tut's, The Booth - all gone or moved to newer, less charming locations. At least Quick Grill survives.
Posted on 2/24/21 at 10:13 am to SummerOfGeorge
Excellent article. Well written and interesting.
Just curious, who do you think the highly rated recruit they stayed away from was?
Just curious, who do you think the highly rated recruit they stayed away from was?
Posted on 2/24/21 at 10:14 am to paperwasp
quote:
How do you like The Athletic? Worth a subscription overall? I've
I like it a lot - I read the NCAA, MLB, NBA and NFL stuff regularly. Good beat writers and good general sport writers, and then good stuff like this.
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