ALABAMA!

[CrimsonTide334]

alabama is hot and cold team. they score 60 70 80 90 depending on who steps up.

[uwm6thman]

Our depth and press will have to win us this game. As stated earlier Mark, Ford, and McCoy will have to step up pretty big, along with Wright. IMO McCoy could be the key to this game defensivly, if he can get some boards and block a couple shots we will be in a good position to win the game. It will be an interesting game to watch and I will be glad to be there. SEE YOU ALL IN CLEVELAND!!!!!!!!

[dylanrocks]

My question for the Tide: Is it really a hot-and-cold team as many pundits say? Or do different teams play the Tide differently, forcing different tempos and matchups? I don't really think of a 24-7 team as one that runs hot and cold.

[CaribbeanTide]

dylanrocks said:

My question for the Tide: Is it really a hot-and-cold team as many pundits say? Or do different teams play the Tide differently, forcing different tempos and matchups? I don't really think of a 24-7 team as one that runs hot and cold.

Most of our players are actually fairly consistent and this team has been hot (or at the very least, quite warm) much more often than it's been cold. Unfortunately, of the handful of losses we do have, a few of them were quite ugly so people tend to harp on those even though we haven't had one of those in well over a month now.

The only player who's typically streaky is Shelton, our 2-guard because his bread-and-butter shot is the spotup 3. When he's on, he's easily good for 20+ points. If he's off, he'll struggle to get 10. Fortunately though, one of our subs (Felix) has increasingly shown he can step in and add some instant offense while also offering a major bump up in defense over Shelton. He'll likely play quite a bit on Thursday as he can play several positions and can guard 1-4 due to his amazing athleticism. On a team of great athletes he's the most athletic.

The rest of the starting lineup is fairly consistent and I don't think our handful of losses here at the end of the season are as indicative of some underlying problem as so many seem to be making them out to be. The biggest problem we've had here at the end of the season is that we've simply run into a few very strong teams playing their best ball of the year. We lost to a strong LSU team by only 1 point on a last second tip-in on their home court. At home, we lost to a Kentucky team that uncharacteristically went ballistic from the 3-point line and shot nearly 70% from beyond the arc, by far their best game of the season. And we lost to a red hot Florida team in the SEC tournament. We actually gave Florida a very good game (much better than Kentucky did against them in the finals and a solid Miss St. team did in the quarterfinals), but our lowest 3-pt shooting % of the year (.158) did us in. People always harp on the losses, but Bama really hasn't had any major 'down' games in well over a month IMO since the Florida loss. We did put in a rather sloppy performance against Ole Miss in the SEC tournament, but in spite of that we still won the game by 17 points. We've had some games where one guy will have a very off night, but this offense is well-rounded so we have several guys who can step up and fill the void if somebody like Shelton's having an off night.

In spite of limited depth, I think we definitely have the athleticism to handle and exploit a pressing defense (Arkansas still runs their famous '40 minutes of hell' and substitues liberally on a team with very good athletes and we beat them twice.) But we don't see it as much so you never know how they'll react.