re: Tide Hoops | Please Anchor

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3rd year in D1 looking for first DI tourney appearance

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Alabama Women’s Basketball@AlabamaWBB
BRITTANY (and Brielle) IS COMING BACK.

@therealbd23

LET’S GOOOO!!!

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This probably applies to like 75% of the guys who played basketball at Alabama between 1998-2008.

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In April of 2011, Rico Pickett watched as Connecticut defeated Butler to win its third national championship. The confetti rained down on Kemba Walker, the star of the tournament, and Pickett wondered what might have been.

A former top-50 recruit, Pickett had twice turned down opportunities to play for Connecticut, once coming out of high school and then again after a year at community college. He opted to stay at home and play for Alabama, where he feuded with his coach and lasted a single season. Had he gone to UConn, the school he grew up rooting for, the championship run would have been his senior year.

“I can’t help but to think about that,” Pickett said.

Pickett’s career coincided with the beginning of the social media boon, an era in which fans feast on day-to-day recruiting updates, transferring is the norm and the word decommitment — which isn’t actually a word at all — has wormed its way into the lexicon. Forty percent of all men’s basketball players who enter college directly from high school transfer from their initial school, according to the most recent data released by the NCAA, and Pickett was at the beginning of the tidal wave when he transferred out of Alabama.

Using rankings compiled by ESPN, The Commercial Appeal contacted a handful of former top-50 recruits from 2007 and 2008 — the unofficial start of the social media age — who changed schools and whose careers wound up sputtering out. Each conversation offered a different window into the convoluted process of selecting a college, and each player said he would have chosen differently if he could do it over again.


Banking on the draft

Nearly 1,100 miles south and west of Storrs, Connecticut, a “small-town boy from Decatur, Alabama,” fancied himself a UConn fan. There was something about the Huskies, who won a national championship while Pickett was in high school, that he loved, even as he watched from a time zone away.

A score-first guard, Pickett blossomed into a star at Decatur High School. He was ranked No. 46 in the country by ESPN in the class of 2007, fielding interest from Florida, Alabama and Connecticut.

But during his junior year of high school, Pickett said he began taking note of Alabama point guard Ronald Steele, a burgeoning star. Steele, who was also born and raised in Alabama, generated All-America buzz in the summer leading into his junior year, and Pickett said it was assumed he would enter the NBA draft after the season.

A new plan emerged. Pickett, the top prospect in Alabama, fell in love with the idea of following in Steele’s footsteps and playing for his home-state school rather than attending Connecticut. He signed his letter of intent after taking just one official visit — to Alabama.

“I was just so convinced,” Pickett said. “I thought Ronnie was about to leave. So what (the coaches) are telling me is, ‘We’re about to hand you the ball. This is about to be your team.’ ”

But injuries and a subpar year for Steele forced him to return for a senior season, throwing Pickett’s ideal scenario out of whack. He clashed with head coach Mark Gottfried, earning multiple suspensions along the way. Pickett, who described Gottfried as a “great person,” said the coaching style just didn’t fit.

He transferred to Miami Dade College where his skills glistened. Pickett averaged 17.3 points and 4.6 assists as both Connecticut and Florida came back around.

Pickett said he was prepared to commit to UConn for a second time until news broke that the program faced possible NCAA sanctions, including a postseason ban. He enrolled instead at Manhattan, where he averaged just shy of 18 points per game and decided to turn pro after one season. He was not drafted.

This September, after a year and half off from basketball, Pickett flew to Morocco to resume a professional career.

“One thing I regret,” Pickett said, “is I only took one official visit.”

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