Daily Archives: November 6, 2012

Thoughts from Alabama’s basketball exhibition game

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The announced attendance at Coleman Coliseum was 10,547. There may not have been quite that many.

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — Alabama beat Division II Stillman College 76-68 at home Tuesday night as Tide head coach Anthony Grant experimented with different lineups and allowed several players plenty of time on the court.

Freshman Devonta Pollard had 15 points, seven rebounds and three steals in 35 minutes. Nick Jacobs had a team-high 16 points and five rebounds, while starting center Moussa Gueye contributed 14 points, six rebounds and three blocks. Trevor Lacey had 13 points, seven rebounds and four assists in 31 minutes.

Here are just some thoughts from watching the game:

–Pollard started slow, but it’s clear he’s going to be an excellent player. A slender 6-foot-8 forward who was a five-star recruit, Pollard scored three of his points in the first half and made all three of his turnovers before intermission. He’s a good athlete and a tremendous leaper, and Grant said Pollard adds a dimension to the team it very much needs. That’s easy to see.

–Gueye, the 7-foot-0 center from Senegal, played in only 12 games last season because of a knee injury. With the injury and lack of conditioning, when he did play, he didn’t play a lot.

This year, he has dropped from 292 pounds to 255 and is moving much better. He said the knee feels stiff sometimes but once he warms up, he’s fine. Alabama really needs somebody big in the middle, and he appears ready and willing to give it a try.

–Grant put Lacey at point guard to start the game and had Trevor Releford come off the bench. Lacey struggled a bit, and the offense looked a little out of sorts. But Alabama will need him to help spell Releford during the season, and certainly it helped to play the position against a small, quick Stillman team.

–Sophomore guard Levi Randolph isn’t the greatest shooter in the world, but he plays hard. He finished with two points, six rebounds, four assists and a pair of steals in 34 minutes. He also made five turnovers. But everything he does is at full speed.

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D.J. Fluker: Alabama’s friendly neighborhood giant

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We’ve posted about this before, but if Alabama offensive tackle D.J. Fluker isn’t the friendliest guy on the team, then it must be somebody who hasn’t gone near the Crimson Tide media room.

Nobody seems more upbeat than Fluker. He always has a smile and a laugh, and whether it’s five reporters in the media room or 55, he always shakes everyone’s hand when he leaves. And, yes, the 6-foot-6, 335-pound Fluker has huge, huge hands. His teammates say none of this surprises them.

Apparently, people on campus are starting to chat up Fluker more these days, too. He said people recognize him more often and speak to him, which is more than fine with him.

“It’s a whole lot more now,” he said. “It’s pretty neat that people walk by, ‘Hey, Fluke, how you doin’?’ ” he said. “I speak back.”

He added that he says something back because he wants to be humble and friendly.

“I do it because people love it,” he said.

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Thoughts from Tuesday’s Alabama practice

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Chris Black, in the black No. 5 jersey, goes through a drill Tuesday.

Alabama freshman receiver Chris Black practiced for the second straight day, and it’s easy to see why Nick Saban seemed so bothered when Black hurt his shoulder in the preseason.

Black had surgery and hasn’t practiced until Monday. He is wearing a black non-contact jersey and can’t go through all the drills. But in the drills he is going through, he shows an explosion and quickness not many players can match. Next season, AJ McCarron should have so much fun as Black teams up with Amari Cooper at receiver. As for this season, Alabama appears to be redshirting Black.

Black is a four-star receiver from First Coast High in Jacksonville, Fla. He enrolled in January and went through spring practice. In the spring game, he caught three passes for 61 yards and a touchdown, returned a kickoff for 30 yards and ran back a punt for 3 yards.

Also in Tuesday’s practice, running back Eddie Lacy (ankle) went through a pass-catching drill at half-speed but didn’t go through a drill that would have required him to cut several times in different directions. Saban said Monday Lacy should be fine to play in Saturday’s game against Texas A&M.

Cooper (ankle) looked fine, although his ankle is heavily taped.

We have a bit of video of the receivers. As always, the guys who play the most are placed in the line that’s farthest from us. Kevin Norwood (83), Christion Jones (22), Chris Black (5), Cyrus Jones (8), Danny Woodson Jr. (81), Amari Cooper (9) and Marvin Shinn (80) go through the drill, in order. This gives you a chance to see both Cooper and Black.

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Eli Gold’s call: ‘The champion has gotten up off the deck’

Posted on November 6, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Alabama radio play-by-play broadcaster Eli Gold did some of his best work Saturday in the last minutes of the Tide’s 21-17 win over LSU.

Some kind fan has put the radio soundtrack with the television pictures for the last 2:30 or so of the game. We’ve got the video, so you can judge for yourself.

My favorite line: “Man, if I didn’t already have gray hair, I would’ve turned pure white-headed by now.”

I’ve always been a big fan of Eli Gold, going back to when he did Birmingham Barons games in the 1980s. A friend told me he thought baseball separates the men from the boys in broadcasting because there’s so much down time to fill. Eli was fabulous when he did the Barons, and he’s just as good doing Alabama football. Fans seem to like him, too, and that’s especially gratifying to see, because when he was hired for the job in 1989, he wasn’t a popular choice with some.

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No need to hurry: The 2-minute offense works just fine

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Alabama running back T.J. Yeldon rolls into the end zone with the game-winning points Saturday. (AP photo by Gerald Herbert)

This is my story for today’s print editions:

—

TUSCALOOSA — The joke going around the Tiger Stadium press box Saturday night went like this: The reason LSU gave up two touchdowns to Alabama’s two-minute offense is because the Tide hadn’t run it in so long there was no film to scout.

Checking the 2011 and 2012 boxscores shows Alabama hasn’t run a hurry-up, two-minute offense at the end of a second half in that span, except in Saturday’s 21-17 win over LSU. In this case, it worked for a touchdown on a five-play drive — a 28-yard touchdown pass from AJ McCarron to T.J. Yeldon.

“It obviously was a good drive in the two-minute,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said. “We’ve never really had to use the two-minute.”

Even so, the Tide practices it regularly each Thursday inside its indoor practice facility. The players say it’s ready when needed, such as the last game against LSU or maybe Saturday’s home game against No. 15-ranked Texas A&M.

Recorded crowd noise fills the facility, and the first-team offense has to go against the Tide’s first-team defense. They have only one limit — they aren’t allowed to go full contact and knock each other all around the building.

“Coach Saban basically tells us how many minutes we have left on the clock, how many timeouts we have left, if we need to get a field goal or touchdown,” said Alabama receiver Kevin Norwood, who made all five of his receptions Saturday in the hurry-up offense. “We just move the ball as an offense.”

So, who wins the most: the offense or defense?

“It’s kind of 50-50,” Norwood said. “The defense wins most of the times, and then we win most of the times. So, it’s kind of 50-50.”

The players say it develops into one of the most fun, competitive parts of practice. And they can’t agree on who wins the most. Linebacker C.J. Mosley disputed the idea the offense wins as much as 50 percent of the time.

“Maybe a little bit less than that,” he said, smiling.

But Mosley said that as Alabama lined up to run the two-minute offense at the end of Saturday’s game, he thought back to all those Thursdays and figured that work would pay off.

“Every Thursday, we do our two-minute drill with the offense,” he said. “Either they need a touchdown or a field goal to score. And Coach (Saban) gives them like 1:30, 1:15, one timeout, two timeouts — just different scenarios.

“And when we get in that situation, it’s like a game. We try our best to stop them from scoring. Sometimes they get plays, sometimes we get our plays. But practicing, that played a big part in that game.”

In the past two seasons, Alabama truly has run its hurry-up offense eight times in the first half and has gotten in position to score each time. That figure counts any time Alabama has gotten the ball with fewer than three minutes on the clock and made a real attempt to score.

This year, it produced a field goal against Mississippi State and a touchdown against Florida Atlantic. Against Michigan, Alabama got in position for a 47-yard field goal attempt at the end of the first half, but lost a fumble. Against LSU, the Tide got touchdowns at the end of both halves.

Last year, Alabama got into field goal range but missed against North Texas, Kent State and Georgia Southern. It worked for a field goal against LSU in the BCS National Championship Game. The Tide started at its own 24 with 1:59 to play and got the Jeremy Shelley field goal on the last play of the half.

Against Arkansas and Tennessee, Alabama started a drive with the idea of the two-minute offense but abandoned it after an early sack.

Norwood and running back Eddie Lacy say the two-minute has worked the few times Alabama has run it because of McCarron. Lacy added that with such high stakes at the end of Saturday’s game, McCarron was even more locked into the drive than usual.

“He knew he had to make the plays,” he said. “He got the plays in. He did exactly what he was supposed to do, make the right reads and make the right passes. You can’t ask for any more from AJ McCarron.”

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