Please stop the "Ron Steele is Hurt...

[bamadoc94]

talk. It is neither logically or psychologically viable.

1) Had RS been healthy last year(or the year before) he most likely would have entered the draft. The coaching staff should have had their future plans already in place. It is illogical to use this as an excuse.
2) Psychologically it is never smart to give your team any excuses to hang their hat on. Remeber the textbook five "it is not a problem" quote from CNS. We all know that RS would be a huge addition to this team, but no one benefits from CMG's constant reminders except for maybe CMG himself.

Take the hand you are dealt, motivate them, coach them up, and put them in a position to be succesful on the court. I have not seen any one of those three thus far in 2007, and sense a recurring problem in this department. If a coach can't do those three things on a consistent basis he has no right coaching at this level. Even if he does recruit great talent.

 

[CornBiscuit]

Where is this talk? :conf2:

 

[RedStar]

Actually 2 things.

1. Buscuit is right, where is the talk?:conf2:
2. Teaser Title... (anytime your topic ends in ... you can go ahead and assume its a teaser... so... don't... do... it...)

 

[Bama-94-00]

1) Had RS been healthy last year(or the year before) he most likely would have entered the draft. ..

What was wrong with Steele season before last? He had a heck of a year and I don't remember him missing games.

 

[HendersonKYTide]

You only have so many schollys for every position. It gets old already reading the CMG bashing and we are not even into 2nd month of the season. We do have a young team that will be hot and cold on different nights. Ron Steele or any good starting point guard would help out on the nights we are cold, but we are holding that scholly for Ron when he is healthy. That is the reason we are weak at that position. The future does look very bright. As far as all the talk about letting these guys run up and down the floor, I can't really understand that one when you have an all american type post player that is scoring at will underneath! Remember folks, the basketball season is a marathon, not a sprint. The fact that we played a Texas A&M team that has a very good shot a the final four tough in their own house and the fact we WILL play well against Georgetown will help us down the road. Don't count us out yet. We do have the only Alabama Coach that has guided his team to a number 1 ranking and an elite 8 birth. We named our gym after a coach that hadn't done that!

 

[Hoot30]

We named our gym after a coach that hadn't done that!

Coleman Coliseum was named after Jeff Coleman. He worked in the athletic dept. but was never the head basketball coach.

 

[bamadoc94]

I knew I would get flamed and that is o.k. I misspoke when I said (or the year before) I was referring to last year. We should however have had someone waiting in the wings knowing that RS probably would not return for his senior season. You don't wait until the guy is gone to recruit his replacement. Defend CMG all you want. I have been one of his biggest supporters, but the time comes when you have been given ample opportunity to prove yourself and CMG has had that. The disturbing thing to me is that CMG's teams have had the same problems year in and year out. It is o.k. to have deficiencies as a coach, most coaches have strengths and weaknesses. The great coaches know their weaknesses and find ways to either hide them or overcome them. CMG surrounded himself with top notch assistants his first few years, but in recent years the quality of our assistant coaches has diminished. Also, it is a regular practice for coaches to visit with other programs to get new ideas. I have not heard of us doing anything like this. I feel like CMG has become somewhat complacent the last couple of years, maybe he has become a little overconfident in his own abilities, and it is hurting our program. He certainly has struggled in trying to adapt a style of play to fit the talent he has. When we have the right guys to fit his system we do ok. However when we don't have those players we struggle to try and run a system we are ill suited for. I agree that we will get better just by playing together, and getting some guys some experience, but just playing these tough games won't do it, you have to win some of those games. CMG has manipulated the system in some respects to improve our strength of schedule by playing higher rated teams out of lower conferences. While this is a good thing, I think it has hidden the fact that we have failed to win many of the real marquee non conference matchups. Well here's hoping I am proven wrong and the Tide comes up big tonight.

 

[BamaMan34]

I knew I would get flamed and that is o.k. I misspoke when I said (or the year before) I was referring to last year. We should however have had someone waiting in the wings knowing that RS probably would not return for his senior season. You don't wait until the guy is gone to recruit his replacement. Defend CMG all you want. I have been one of his biggest supporters, but the time comes when you have been given ample opportunity to prove yourself and CMG has had that. The disturbing thing to me is that CMG's teams have had the same problems year in and year out. It is o.k. to have deficiencies as a coach, most coaches have strengths and weaknesses. The great coaches know their weaknesses and find ways to either hide them or overcome them. CMG surrounded himself with top notch assistants his first few years, but in recent years the quality of our assistant coaches has diminished. Also, it is a regular practice for coaches to visit with other programs to get new ideas. I have not heard of us doing anything like this. I feel like CMG has become somewhat complacent the last couple of years, maybe he has become a little overconfident in his own abilities, and it is hurting our program. He certainly has struggled in trying to adapt a style of play to fit the talent he has. When we have the right guys to fit his system we do ok. However when we don't have those players we struggle to try and run a system we are ill suited for. I agree that we will get better just by playing together, and getting some guys some experience, but just playing these tough games won't do it, you have to win some of those games. CMG has manipulated the system in some respects to improve our strength of schedule by playing higher rated teams out of lower conferences. While this is a good thing, I think it has hidden the fact that we have failed to win many of the real marquee non conference matchups. Well here's hoping I am proven wrong and the Tide comes up big tonight.

Please explain why we recruited Rico Pickett. Had Steele been healthy last year and gone to the NBA this year the situation would be no different than it currently is. We signed a highly touted point guard. Terrance Meade played as a true freshman, Mo Williams played as a true freshman, Ronald Steele played as a true freshman. I fail to understand your argument, we did recruit a replacement.

 

[CornBiscuit]

He certainly has struggled in trying to adapt a style of play to fit the talent he has.

You could have saved yourself a lot of time and just said that. As far as having someone waiting in the wings, we do. And I dont think they knew how Steele's knees were going to react anyways.

 

[BamaLaw]

Where is this talk? :conf2:

Did not Gottfried, himself, blame the loss to Belmont on the fact that the game was scheduled with the expectation that Steele would be in the lineup? Gottfried can always find an excuse for why his teams underperform.

 

[bamadoc94]

Thank you Law. I don't understand why it is so hard for people to see my point. You don't want to be turning your team over to a true freshman point guard every three to four years. You would like to have at least a sophomore who has been in the program, and hopefully gained some game experience. Of course a coach will recruit a point guard if his current one has just graduated, that's common sense, but ten years in you should be at a point where you are looking to move sophs and juniors into the lineup, and not rebuilding every four years with a freshman. Is this point so hard to understand? I know there are unforseen things that can happen, but with CMG's track record of players leaving early, and RS's obvious high draft status had he been healthy, the emphasis on bringing in a point guard/heir apparent should have been prior to last season. That guy could have had a year to learn the system and gain experience, and been ready to step in this year. If this were an isolated incident it would be one thing, but we always seem to be "rebuilding" in one area or another. CMG has not developed a flow of players in and out of the program like you see at the top programs, which CMG tries to claim we are. He seems to be more of a "we'll cross that bridge when we get there" kind of guy, instead of having any real vision of the future.

 

[bamadoc94]

Please explain why we recruited Rico Pickett. Had Steele been healthy last year and gone to the NBA this year the situation would be no different than it currently is. We signed a highly touted point guard. Terrance Meade played as a true freshman, Mo Williams played as a true freshman, Ronald Steele played as a true freshman. I fail to understand your argument, we did recruit a replacement.

You just proved my point. Terrance Meade we had no choice, the cupboard was bare and Gottfried went with the young talent. Mo Williams was a special guy who left early( should have been a learning experience). Ronald Steele is another special guy(but we did not learn from the Mo Williams situation). We should have known after RS's soph year that he would probably only stay one more year and looked to the future, not waited until the following year to sign a point guard. CMG seems to have no real vision about the future of his team and this program. You, me and everyone else on here had a good idea that RS would be gone after his junior year barring injury. Why couldn't CMG foresee this and sign a PG to bring in last year? I for one see no reason to have to start a freshman PG every 3 to 4 years, especially in a system where that position is obviously critical to your teams success. We should all by now have an appreciation for how critical a PG is to our teams success, and look to bring one in almost every year, with the idea that we may move one over to the two guard. Instead we have an abundance of shooting guards with nowhere to use them all. Go ahead and start attacking me. I love alabama BBall and have been following since the CM Newton days. I know and understand how the game is supposed to be played. I'm not saying get rid of Gottfried, but this endless string of excuses has got to stop. At times we fail to play sound fundamental basketball, and our recruiting philosophy doesn't seem to have any real direction. Recruiting a bunch of highly touted players and sorting them out later is fine for a coach who is flexible and can alter his style of play. If you are commited to a system though you should recruit to that system, even if it means taking a player who may not be as highly rated but is a better fit for your team.

 

[BamaSteve999]

I'll admit I am no Gottfried supporter, so I am biased on this question. And I would say that some of the elite players we have had probably came here due to the opportunity to play early, much as is happening with the football team right now, and you have to take your lumps a little with that.

However, I am 100% with you on the excuses. If CMG was about 1/10 as good a basketball coach as he was a PR man, we would be unstoppable.

Consider this: as another poster said in this thread, he is the only coach who has gotten us to the Elite 8. Fine, I give him props for that. That took a grand total of three good games in a row to occur, and we were helped by several events in that streak (Stanford being a questionable 1 seed, their best player fouling out, etc.). Why is that still a big deal 5 years later when we have not even sniffed it again? And why has CMG suddenly trotted out his ring signifying that?

Another one has to do with his surgery. If I am not sadly mistaken, he had a similar type surgery a couple years ago and nobody heard anything about it. Why would he release the fact that he had some ....-ant outpatient surgery on a hernia except for the opportunity to let everybody know how he was toughing it out to get back to work the next day?

Fact is, he is simply not that good of a basketball coach. They played better tonight, but how many times did the offense consist of standing around for 25 seconds and then a wild shot after a one-on-one move with 5 seconds left on the shot clock? And what happened when it got down to winning time? Georgetown took over and Alabama folded. A zone defense just absolutely bumfuzzles us for some inexplicable reason.

Maybe they will get better and he will prove me wrong.

 

[BamaMan34]

You just proved my point. Terrance Meade we had no choice, the cupboard was bare and Gottfried went with the young talent. Mo Williams was a special guy who left early( should have been a learning experience). Ronald Steele is another special guy(but we did not learn from the Mo Williams situation). We should have known after RS's soph year that he would probably only stay one more year and looked to the future, not waited until the following year to sign a point guard. CMG seems to have no real vision about the future of his team and this program. You, me and everyone else on here had a good idea that RS would be gone after his junior year barring injury. Why couldn't CMG foresee this and sign a PG to bring in last year? I for one see no reason to have to start a freshman PG every 3 to 4 years, especially in a system where that position is obviously critical to your teams success. We should all by now have an appreciation for how critical a PG is to our teams success, and look to bring one in almost every year, with the idea that we may move one over to the two guard. Instead we have an abundance of shooting guards with nowhere to use them all. Go ahead and start attacking me. I love alabama BBall and have been following since the CM Newton days. I know and understand how the game is supposed to be played. I'm not saying get rid of Gottfried, but this endless string of excuses has got to stop. At times we fail to play sound fundamental basketball, and our recruiting philosophy doesn't seem to have any real direction. Recruiting a bunch of highly touted players and sorting them out later is fine for a coach who is flexible and can alter his style of play. If you are commited to a system though you should recruit to that system, even if it means taking a player who may not be as highly rated but is a better fit for your team.

I think you might should follow recruiting a little closer. I'll give you Terrance Meade, we had no other choice his freshman year but it's not like he was chopped liver. Would Mo staying another year have helped us? Sure, but it's hard to look back and say he made the wrong decision for him as an individual.

I'm strictly arguing recruiting with you. We signed Mikhail Torrance (recruited as a PG) after Steele's sophomore year. We signed Rico Pickett last year and by the way we recruited him for more than just his senior year. After Steele's freshman year we signed Ray George (who never became eligible) and Brandon Hollinger, both point guards. That's 4 point guards in three years. I have no clue as to what our recruiting strategy should be but I do know that CMG has done exactly what you are begging him to do.

Would we rather have senior point guards that freshman point guards? Maybe, but if you want a senior point guard it probably means he wasn't highly touted and had to be developed over four years. All I'm saying is it's not the end of the world to play a true freshman at the point and I think we've recruited the position more than adequately.