March Madness
While we hope for the best, and applaud the basketball team sticking together through what has been one of the most difficult seasons I’ve ever seen, the season most likely will be ending down in Tampa at the SEC Tourney. And after that, its nothing but boring sports for like half a year. I enjoy going to baseball games and everything, but the beer-free atmosphere acts like Citronella to my mosquito-like existence, keeping me away unless I get in a mood for a good sunburn.

The Big Dance
Unless something unusual happens, I won’t be paying much attention to the NCAA Tourney this year, with none of my favorite schools in the mix it just seems like college basketball overdose. People get excited about the brackets, fuck your brackets. Brackets just make me think of painful dental work.The first two weekends are so jam packed with games, a motherfucker can’t finish a layup without someone swooping in and showing us some private school rich kids running around in circles after some awe-inspring upset, then these kids continue running in circles until they end up your boss. As your boss, they will run the company into the ground with that beleif in the impossible that was founded on that day. Here is a clue: you are not special, that shit happens every year, it is a statistical CERTAINTY that some bullshit upset will happen. All your team did was make sure all the people with intelligent Final Four picks will get theirs wrong, and the only one that will get them right is some old lady that used the ‘counting the seeds in her poop to pick the seeds in the tourney’ method.

A Big Splash
UA has promised to make a ‘big splash’ in their basketball coaching search, and after going through most of the lists of candidates I have seen on other web sites, I have come to one conclusion, they are all wrong. I can think of few coaches that could usurp more water and send it into the air than this man:

The Textbook Scandal
The NCAA spends all this effort trying to promote the idea of ‘student-athletes’ to the masses, to protect the idea of amateur competition while preparing these young people for the real world. The schools, in turn, hire people to spend all day trying to help these guys study, sometimes struggling to get them to even open a textbook. In 2007, several Alabama players took to their educational duties a bit to far, picking up textbooks for classes they were not even taking. Now, the Crimson Tide either faces either the merciless volts of ‘ole sparky’ or a high velocity ruler to Mal Moore’s Ulna and Radius bones.

As for me, I’m not going to worry about this too much until the verdict is handed in, because it won’t do any good, and I think its a disservice to textbooks worldwide to link them to any scandal. The vast majority of textbooks have never violated NCAA rules, and linking them to a scandal with do nothing but besmirch their good name.

Bama Hoops has excellent coverage of the Tide b-ball team, as this season painfully progresses into SEC play this Sunday vs the Bouncing Swamp Tigers at the Coleman Emptysium. The student harassment of LSU coach John Brady was always a highlight of the SEC season, you, sir, will be missed. Hopefully the atmosphere won’t be so bad that any football recruits visiting will not be scared away by the apathy.

Aubarnie: Self styled as “Your premium source for the latest and greatest news breaking from the greatest little trailer park on the plains: Opelika!”, my peanut-sized Alabammer brain can barely comprehend this page, but I recommend checking it out for all the weird shit and Finebaum caller dioramas.

Also, speaking of Auburn, this lizard eating video on deadspin is pretty gross, and it also starts the countdown to some fine Bammer specimen getting all youtubed up doing something dumb. Leave your Tide Gear at home before doing taping yourself doing something fucking retarded, my Alabama brothers and sisters.

Former Bama fullback Le’Ron McClain was on the Roundtable this morning, saying ‘man’ a lot, but thats cool, I do too. This dude suprised everyone this year, looking like the second coming of Jerome Bettis for the Baltimore Ravens. I think he surpassed his entire Alabama rushing yardage total in something like 2 games and has been a 3rd down beast.

Recruiting is getting insane, this weekend Tuscaloosa will be crawling with a veritable cornucopia of future football stars. We’ll have some Tower of Bammer style recruiting coverage coming soon.

I know, I know “How can you watch Basketball with a Number One football team out there!” but I strive for balance in my life. I balance out bacon with beef, I balance out fried chicken with surly looks at passers-by. And, now, I guess I balance out football success, with watching basketball futility. In the words of Coach Saban, “You can’t have your debbie cake without eatin’ the first debbie cake!”

But fear not, we’ll have some more Iron Bowl/SEC Championship hysterical rambling for you soon, my brothers and sisters.

Last year, the basketball season was a trying time for Bammers that like their balls to bounce of the ground in predictable ways. The Tide ended with a turdlike 6-12 conference record and a surprising loss to Belmont (the hoops team’s La Monroe) shows that, despite all the efforts of Richard Hendrix, this team was not very good last year.

Losing All-American point guard Ronald Steele for the year to knee surgery got last season started on the wrong foot. That wrong foot continued to guide the team to an SEC Tournament loss in the middle of a downtown Atlanta fucking tornado where a last second 3-point shot may have Saved Lives. The team never really looked like they, ya know, ran plays. Also we had an odd as fuck confrontation between Mark Gottfried’s wife vs radio turd and coaching co Paul Finebaum.

“We’ve got five kids!” – Elizabeth Gottfried, yelling at Paul Finebaum, apparently about the starting lineup

Don’t worry Mrs. Gottfried, as soon as the weather gets cold and the F-Baum is convinced all the football coaches he can get canned are cleaning out their desks, he’ll once again turn his feiry gaze upon Bama hoops, and he will be hand counting the empty seats in Coleman Coliseum.

I know its been a while since you’ve seen him, but Ron Steele can be good enough to take the team to the NCAA Tournament by himself, as long as highly regarded freshman forward JaMychal Green and the other young big dudes can grab some boards and whatnot. Steele’s return carries enough weight that the Tide has been picked by the media to win the SEC west.

It hasn’t been all flowers and skittles this offseason, Alabama lost their top inside player to the NBA draft, 4-star recruit Tony Mitchell seemed to be on the team and then failed to qualify academically. Starting point guard Rico Pickett transferred with not-so-nice things to say about our Mad Mark, and energetic reserve guard Justin Tubbs also left the team.

Keys for the Tide 2008-09 B-Ball team:
A New Big Man – Can any of the experienced big men improve? With Hendrix’s Double digit rebounds gone to the NBA, Demetrius Jemison, Justin Knox, and Yamene Coleman will all return and see minutes this year, hopefully Jemison can build on the strong finish he had last season.
Free Throw Shooting – Can anyone hit free throws? Charity stripe bricklayers Pickett and Hendrix are gone from last year, so this team could have better odds going down the stretch in close games.
A Smaller Lineup – Can we run plays? or at least, just, run? The half court game mainly consists of five guys standing around flat-footed and passing the ball around the perimeter, this year there has been talk of using a smaller lineup and focusing on defensive pressure and the transitional game.

The fact is, Coach Gottfried, unless this team completely tanks, will probably be scowling around Coleman Coliseum for the next few years. We can just hope that new assistant coach and ruby-slippered meatball of energy Antoine Pettway can help bring out something more than boogers from the team this year:

I am always partial to his saving the planet with jeff goldblum by the implausible method of infecting the alien mothership with a computer virus. always clutch, man.

or maybe his missed dunk: