Trevor Lacey Transferring

My pessimism with Bama basketball is reaching Gottfried-era levels.

Yep.. Time for the Grant bus to move on... The players apparently are not onboard with his style. At some point you have to say the problem is with the head chief, not the indians...
 
Whether this a TL problem or a CAG problem or both, it is not good for the program. Coach's Hoosier offense needs a total revamp. I hope he is on the recruiting trail for a big man because he has absolutely got to have one. It appears that CAG is not comfortable in playing with top level talent on his roster. To my knowledge he never had a discipline issue with TL. The fact that we havent seen any coaching staff changes in the off season is pretty troubling - no statement about improving the offense. No communication or PR from CAG is again not good. The man doesnt go the radio, doesnt play in golf tournaments, doesnt speak to booster groups, hell he doesnt even come on the weekly Tide Show - he sends an assistant as a fill-in. Every college program requires some promotion and visibility from the HC. If he wants to keep this routine up and think its going to be successful in a state where we need more basketball awareness and we generally want our coaches to be accessible to the public, he just needs to go get a NBA assistant job and be done with it because that is about how visible he has made himself.

I want him to succeed as much as anybody, seriously. But it has to cause concern when you have 20+% turnover every year in your roster due to transfers out of your program. My brother-in-law played college ball and he says that basketball recruiting is a cesspool (even worse than football) because there are so many programs, limited roster spots available, and 1 or 2 players can totally change the forecast for the team. He says that if CAG wants to win enough to move on to another program he is going have to accept a certain amount of crap in recruiting.

He ought to just look at football, you cant get top tier talent to your school if you are not interested in developing the players on a path to play in the NBA. Any player we have had in the last 4 years that had legitimate NBA talent is no longer with the program by either transfer or being run off by CAG.
 
Any player we have had in the last 4 years that had legitimate NBA talent is no longer with the program by either transfer or being run off by CAG.

Yep, would not shock me to see Pollard be the next to leave. Why does he want to waste another year in CAG's offense? I am just glad Releford is going to be a senior so it would be hard for him to transfer. (Unless he graduates in May and can use the post-grad rule...)
 
The man doesnt go the radio, doesnt play in golf tournaments, doesnt speak to booster groups, hell he doesnt even come on the weekly Tide Show - he sends an assistant as a fill-in. Every college program requires some promotion and visibility from the HC. If he wants to keep this routine up and think its going to be successful in a state where we need more basketball awareness and we generally want our coaches to be accessible to the public, he just needs to go get a NBA assistant job and be done with it because that is about how visible he has made himself.

This is something that our new AD needs to make mandatory. He needs to do a weekly radio show, play golf tournaments, attend booster meetings and do a basketball version of Crimson Caravan. If Coach Saban has the time, CAG certainly can find the time. I guarantee he does not spend as much time as Saban does working...
 
Whether he gets fired or quits I'll bet money that he lands on his feet before the Bama basketball program does. I guess he should have let Mitchell run the asylum. This is one of 260 plus transfers this year. Last year the number was 455. It happens. It's a set back, but what lets not pretend Hankerson, Mitchell, Carter, Durant, and Eblen are future NBA all-stars that were unfairly run off by Grant. He'll either perform or get fired. It's looking like Grant and Bama may be a bad mix, but I wouldn't expect a miracle worker to come in after him.
 
Tweet from DrewDALintel:

From Trevor Lacey's HS coach Jack Doss: He loves Alabama but player development is important for his future. Will transfer to ACC or Big Ten

TL says that he improved and now has to seek other options. Was he just using UA like a JUCO to be able to be marketable for a "contender"?
 
Tweet from DrewDALintel:



TL says that he improved and now has to seek other options. Was he just using UA like a JUCO to be able to be marketable for a "contender"?

I would say no because he considered a top notch recruit out of high school that had his choice of many top-tier programs. My opinion of Lacey is that he just isn't very athletic and on top of that seemed to be carrying some extra weight which implied a lack of work ethic. Even if he worked off the weight and got in top-notch shape I'm not sure he has the natural athletic ability to play at a high level. He has fairly good basketball skills but to be honest I really don't see him ever being a NBA player.
 
Lets not pretend this doesn't hurt. He was our best rebounding guard and really our only other ball handler besides Releford. The fact is this system was ill suited to his skills. Lacey is an offensive peg who was trying to be forced into a defensive square hole. Sometimes, it just doesn't work well together.

I don't know anything about the JUCO guard Key coming in, but I thought he was a 2 shooting guard. Retin has some ball handling skills, but has a lot of learning to do if he is going to be Relly's backup.
 
I hate to hear this. Honestly, I'm one of CAGs biggest fans, but I am even starting to wonder.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
First I'll try to look at the good side of this. Obasohan is now the clear choice in the back court with Releford, which towards the end of the year many people were saying "Lacey will lose minutes to Retin next year". While we'll lose his scoring touch, and rebounding from the 2, we seem to have a lot more coming back next year to at least quell his loss a bit. So in one aspect, I think we'll be _okay_ with this...

however...

As an avid supporter of CAG through the turmoil this year, this is disheartening. There just isn't room for us (we don't recruit a ton of one and done and two and done's obviously) to lose players. We recruit and build the mid-major way. Guys who stay four years, put team ahead of self, and buy into the system. Well...we have no one staying four years, or buying into the system it seems, so 1/3 isn't cutting it. I would like to hear thoughts from Earle on this before I comment more...
 
First of all Alabama is not normally a one and done then to the NBA program . We had a few players during the years but not many. CWS, CCMN, and CMG recruits came from MS, some GA and Al mainly. We had some pretty good programs but never great. It takes a while to get things going. I think our baseball is in worst shape then the basketball program. I like the direction we are going. Yeah some players are going to leave but there will be some that won't. Give this guy a chance. We have only been in the big dance 5 times in this century before CAG got here.
 
Very,very disappointed to see Lacey leaving. I think the team was set to make a pretty good run next year- but now all bets are off. It's not that Lacey is all world- I sincerely doubt that he will play in the NBA based on what I have seen. But he had the skills to be a very good college player and will be virtually impossible to replace next season. Could easily be the difference in making the tournament and in wasting time in the NIT again.

I am beginning to have doubts about whether this program will reach the level that I had hoped for under Grant or match the success under Wimp Sanderson. The in-state talent is just not good enough anymore to sustain on a year-to year basis. And the constant turnover with the team just trumps the small gains that are achieved.

I think Lacey is a good kid with a pretty good skill set- although I do think he may have been somewhat over-rated coming out of high school. His level of competitition at the 4-A level in this state was really not that great. He clearly has other family members influencing his decisions- those who think that Grant is suffocating his NBA dreams.

Not sure what the future holds for Grant and Bama basketball-just cannot seem to get over the hump. Disappointing.
 
I do have a little bit of inside knowledge about the situation, but I have to step sort of gingerly around the issue. The fact that TL hadn't decided to transfer until after a meeting this AM with Grant says worlds. The meeting didn't go well and convinced TL that Bama was not the place for him. I understand that Hipsher has been sort of a buffer between Grant and the players and he's gone. Grant's personality can have some very sharp edges. TL still leans heavily on his HS coach, Jack Doss, for advice and Doss will be probably the one helping him look for a destination. I understand he'll be looking at the B1G and ACC. There's no way this can't shorten Grant's fuse a bit and warm his seat a bit more. I've said it before that this next season will decide his tenure. I think that's become even more obvious. One of the first things CBB did was promote Wendell out. I don't think he'll have unlimited patience with Grant. I don't think he'll wait for Grant to hang himself like Gottfried did...
 
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