I now feel the exact same way I did three years before Gottfried was removed.

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linniepatrick

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I now feel the same way I did two years before Grant was removed. Why delay the inevitable? It is crystal clear Avery Johnson will not get it done. He is simply in over his head. The SEC is too tough now and the coaching too good. Byrne needs to make the tough call and go get a coach that can compete against Pearl, Howland, Barnes, etc, etc. The SEC has seen a huge improvement in coaching almost across the board. Alabama continues to wallow in mediocrity. That will not change under Johnson. There is a coach currently sitting on the sidelines that would be a great hire. Fred Hoiberg is available. He did a fabulous job at Iowa St. I am sure there are others that would be a significant upgrade in coaching than what we have now.
 

JustNeedMe81

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Okay, I don't feel like this is on Avery 100 percent. The players has to owe up to their mistakes. They are not finishing the game in second half like they should've. Memphis is having same issue as well. Kentucky as well. If we clean up the mistakes in second half, we would looking at the team with 1 losses by now.

The issue I see with this team are this: Experience playing team ball. Last year they deferred to Sexton way too much on offense. This year, this is more balanced team. I expect them to be lot better by Feb or March. We just started SEC Play like last week or two weeks ago.

Last but least, Who would be way better than Avery right now? You think Hoiberg can actually get the job done in SEC with the roster we have? The team is real good, but are inconsistent with their ball play... Like I said before, not all is on Avery. People needs to stop having high expectations and just let Johnson do his job.
 

linniepatrick

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Okay, I don't feel like this is on Avery 100 percent. The players has to owe up to their mistakes. They are not finishing the game in second half like they should've. Memphis is having same issue as well. Kentucky as well. If we clean up the mistakes in second half, we would looking at the team with 1 losses by now.

The issue I see with this team are this: Experience playing team ball. Last year they deferred to Sexton way too much on offense. This year, this is more balanced team. I expect them to be lot better by Feb or March. We just started SEC Play like last week or two weeks ago.

Last but least, Who would be way better than Avery right now? You think Hoiberg can actually get the job done in SEC with the roster we have? The team is real good, but are inconsistent with their ball play... Like I said before, not all is on Avery. People needs to stop having high expectations and just let Johnson do his job.
Ok, so it is only 90% on Avery. Whose responsibility is it to hold players accountable? We play careless basketball. One player in particular is a turnover machine. We consistently struggle shooting free throws. We are in year four and still suck. What is our identity as a basketball team? What do we try to do on offense? What do we try to do on defense? It isn't clear and that is 100% on Avery. Check out what Hoiberg did at Iowa St. He competed against a pretty darn good conference. So, yes, I think Hoiberg would be doing better. I firmly believe we would be more sound fundamentally and our players would not be making the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. And, perhaps, just perhaps, we would have one or two inbounds plays. Johnson makes $3 million per year, maybe more. He is in YEAR FOUR. I am not asking for a Final Four caliber program, just one that gives consistently good effort, is sound fundamentally and has some semblance of a basketball strategy. We can continue down this path and get further and further behind other programs, or we can go ahead and make the change. Ole Miss is about to blow past us in year one.
 

linniepatrick

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No doubt Greg Byrne would be more likely to follow our counsel on this if we could prevent his reading the board from four years ago and seeing how generally opposed opinion was to the possibility of hiring Rick Barnes...

Just curious, what was the general complaint about Barnes? I probably would have leaned more towards Howland, but Barnes would have been an awesome choice.
 

rolltide_21

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Dec 9, 2007
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Okay, I don't feel like this is on Avery 100 percent. The players has to owe up to their mistakes. They are not finishing the game in second half like they should've. Memphis is having same issue as well. Kentucky as well. If we clean up the mistakes in second half, we would looking at the team with 1 losses by now.

The issue I see with this team are this: Experience playing team ball. Last year they deferred to Sexton way too much on offense. This year, this is more balanced team. I expect them to be lot better by Feb or March. We just started SEC Play like last week or two weeks ago.

Last but least, Who would be way better than Avery right now? You think Hoiberg can actually get the job done in SEC with the roster we have? The team is real good, but are inconsistent with their ball play... Like I said before, not all is on Avery. People needs to stop having high expectations and just let Johnson do his job.
Good points. I think you can add another factor in youth. Several of the players are freshman, sophmores, or tranfers will little playing experience. I think they will improve as the year goes on.
 

linniepatrick

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Good points. I think you can add another factor in youth. Several of the players are freshman, sophmores, or tranfers will little playing experience. I think they will improve as the year goes on.
Youth is no excuse. Everyone, generally speaking is young. We are actually experienced in the current state of college basketball. All of our players with the exception of Kira, have played extensively over the last two years.
 

TitleWave

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Youth is no excuse. Everyone, generally speaking is young. We are actually experienced in the current state of college basketball. All of our players with the exception of Kira, have played extensively over the last two years.
Not exculpating Avery, but inconsistency is the name that most of college basketball goes by these days. A little comparative gauge: Alabama loses to Northeastern at a neutral site by 20 points or whatever (it was a rout), Delaware loses at home to the team generally considered the worst in D1, rival "The" Delaware State University, then loses to Hofstra in the school's worst defeat in 35 years, then travels to Boston a few days later and bumps off Northeastern. An RPI swing of about 180 places in three games.

And to further not exculpate Avery, but to put at least some of the misery on him, so long as the roster dictates (or seems to be dictating) that Riley Norris plays meaningful minutes - like fouling out in 18-19 minutes Saturday vs. aTm - there are going to be nights when 'Bama may be mistaken for the Washington Generals with Red Klotz at power forward...
 

bamamick

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Iirc, Barnes was considered over the hill. White wasn't a big enough name. I really don't remember too many names after the guy at Wichita. I think that Avery wanted the job and it made Bill Battle's life easier to give it to him.

Rtr
 

TideWatcher

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I like Avery, and he knows basketball. My biggest issue is Bama's inconsistency on the defensive end. That tends to go straight to the coach. I like watching SC play. They aren't as talented as Bama this year, but play hard on D. Same for the Vols, and MS State. No one watching Bama would say you can count on the D showing up. But the season has a long way to go, and they have time to right the ship. And as some have pointed out, Bama narrowly has missed out on having a very good record right now, letting some games slip away.
 

beatthemtigers

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Don’t agree, he’ll get it figured out and still think we have a good season. Recruiting classes getting better every year, offense has improved a good bit this year and we have more offense coming next year
 

ReturnToGlory

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Avery is an improvement over Grant big-time. He has a winning record against AP Top 25 (12-10) while before he showed up, we couldn't buy a win. Now, the losses to Georgia State and Texas A&M are very concerning because we didn't play a lick of defense and Avery didn't seem to be able to a)make any adjustments and b)was not able to get players to stop the slide. A good coach usually is able to call a timeout and get the players to respond. If it was me, their behinds wouldn't get off their seats if there wasn't effort on defense.
 

CajunCrimson

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We keep thinking we can be an elite hoops school. We cannot.

We are doomed to forever be a different level hoops school. We will have mid level talent, mid level coaching, and mid level fan support.

Not sure if Wimp jinxed us, but other than the one year we luckily got Stanford in RD 2, we are nearing 30 years of mediocrity

It’s life
 

linniepatrick

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We keep thinking we can be an elite hoops school. We cannot.

We are doomed to forever be a different level hoops school. We will have mid level talent, mid level coaching, and mid level fan support.

Not sure if Wimp jinxed us, but other than the one year we luckily got Stanford in RD 2, we are nearing 30 years of mediocrity

It’s life
I am not asking for elite. I am asking for good. A program that makes the dance 8 out of 10 years. A program that plays on the second weekend of the tournament three or four times in a ten year span. We have been the textbook definition of mediocrity since Wimp left. But, what about the twenty years before that? The twenty years before that we were the second best team in the SEC. There is no reason we couldn't do that again.
 

imauafan

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Iirc, Barnes was considered over the hill. White wasn't a big enough name. I really don't remember too many names after the guy at Wichita. I think that Avery wanted the job and it made Bill Battle's life easier to give it to him.

Rtr
I did not know this but last night on the Wes Neighbors/Steve Moulton show it was mentioned that Kermit Davis was the front runner for the job after Gregg Marshall turned us down until Avery contacted us to let us know he was interested in the job.
 

bamamoss2

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I have been a fan and supporter of Coach Johnson. He has a lot of enthusiasm, excellent background, proven recruiter while at Bama.

However, I have continued to see the points made by poster linniepatrick above and agree. I was at the aTm game this past Saturday and recognized very early in the second half that the lack of defense and fundamentals demonstrated by the team would likely allow the first half lead erode and lose the game.

It appeared that there was a lack of leadership from anyone on the floor. Coach Johnson's enthusiasm does not transfer to the players.

I would be excited to see this team have a turn around, but I certainly do not expect it.
 

Mystical

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Truth is he is right on target. This is his 4th year. Year one and two with Grants players he went to the NIT. Year 3 with his own players he went to the second round of the NCAA. Each year his win total has increased in a league that is much harder than what Grant or Gottfried had to deal with. We finally have an offense. We lost that last game because of letting off the gas when we were up. Coach Avery played AJ to many minutes. I don't think he will do that again. We have had 2 bad games this year but even the teams that are elite have bad games. I am sure Kentucky fans felt losing to us was a bad loss. Duke fans probably thought losing to Syracuse was a bad loss. If our fans were in charge of Duke Mike Kryzewski would have been fired after year 3 also. He didn't make the tournament till year 4.

Alabama does not have a history of winning it all in basketball. When we were making sweet 16's during the Wimp years you didn't have the Mid Majors on tv like they are now. Back then our facilities for basketball were considered top 20 maybe top 10 in the country. Now you have 50 teams with better basketball facilities than we do. No surprise when teams spend money on their basketball facilities the wins go up. Look no further than Auburn and Tennessee. Coleman was the spot in the 70's and 80's. My dad told me he went to an Elvis concert there.

We have to show some patience. There are not quick fixes. We are getting looks from players despite our fans not looking fanatical about basketball in recruits eyes. If he can keep recruiting like this he will win off talent alone. We are missing one dog player who will stick his nose in there and shut down the other teams point guard. Our best defender got rung up on some bogus calls the last game and barely saw the floor.
 

RTR91

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I did not know this but last night on the Wes Neighbors/Steve Moulton show it was mentioned that Kermit Davis was the front runner for the job after Gregg Marshall turned us down until Avery contacted us to let us know he was interested in the job.
I don't ever remember hearing his name mentioned. Matter of fact, some were surprised Ole Miss hired him based on his past.
 

JDCrimson

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I am still solid with Avery but the one thing he is got to get better at is getting the team to come out of the half with better intensity. In almost every game this season, we waste the first 6-8 opening minutes of the 2nd half in a scoring lapse either losing a comfortable lead or getting behind.

I think our movement on offense is better this year but we dont have great ballhandlers and Petty cant hit squat away from home and who knows what is going on with Jones. We just simply should not have lost to GaSt or A&M.

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk
 

ReturnToGlory

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We keep thinking we can be an elite hoops school. We cannot.

We are doomed to forever be a different level hoops school. We will have mid level talent, mid level coaching, and mid level fan support.

Not sure if Wimp jinxed us, but other than the one year we luckily got Stanford in RD 2, we are nearing 30 years of mediocrity

It’s life
Thanks for the pep talk. LOL.
 
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