There Goes Our Chance to Go Undefeated

Two weeks ago, a friend of mine made this statement:

"The Road to 36-0 starts tonight boys!"

He was planning on attending the first exhibition game of the year for the Alabama basketball team. With all of the optimism surrounding our Up Tempo team, why wouldn't you think the team would be good this year? They were even picked to win the SEC West.

And then I saw them play Thursday night. Same old high post offense, same offense against the zone, same old/same old....

However, the Tide won by 54 points. You had to think things were going to be better this year, and maybe they will. However, in Sunday night's season opener it sure wasn't.

In case you are still drinking the football kool-aid and didn't know it, the Tide dropped their season opener to Mercer Sunday night.

We've heard a whole lot about the speed and athleticism of this team. This is what Gottfried had to say before the second exhibition game...

"I'm excited about our team," Gottfried said as he spoke about tonight's 7 p.m. exhibition game against Belhaven. "I think we are a lot different. I like our speed and our quickness. We need to utilize that speed and quickness and that's something we talk about everyday in our staff meeting. I think a lot of guys have improved. I think (senior forward) Alonzo Gee is better, I think (junior forward) Demetrius Jemison is better. Those guys have improved as they've gotten a year older. Senario Hillman has improved from a year ago, (Mikhail) Torrance has improved. We've still got some questions and concerns about our team, like everybody does, but I'm excited about the potential of the team.

You can be athletic as you want to be, but if you can't hit an outside shot, it won't matter. Which is exactly what happened in the game. The Tide couldn't hit an outside shot, they were outrebounded and needed a super human performance by Ronald Steele, just to get back in the game. But that's OK, because our guys learned a lot.

Did you know that? Sometimes they learn more when they lose than win they win. And knowledge is power, right?

Gottfried tried to find something positive to salvage from the loss.

"The message to the team was that we've got to learn from this," he said. "Sometimes, you learn more from something like this than you do winning the game."

So much for that 36-0 season....