Just a Minute: Grading Alabama Basketball's First Half of Regular Season
Alabama basketball is 11-5 (3-0 SEC) at the halfway point of the regular season. How would you grade the Crimson Tide's performance?
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00:00 Welcome into Bama Central's Just a Minute alongside Blake Beiler. I'm Katie Windham.
00:05 And Blake, we are at the halfway point of the Alabama basketball regular season.
00:10 The Crimson Tide hosts Missouri tonight at 6.
00:12 Weather permitting, which all things we know, the game should still go on.
00:15 It is an indoor sport. It may be a little difficult for some fans to get there,
00:18 but the game should still happen.
00:20 But Alabama's 11-5 overall, 3-0 in SEC play, great start to conference play.
00:26 At this kind of halfway point, what would you grade Alabama basketball on their performance?
00:31 Maybe go with offense, defense, and an overall grade you'd give them for the first half of this season.
00:37 Offense has to be like an A+, like the highest grade you can get.
00:41 I think they have one of, if not the best, offenses in the country.
00:45 That's reflected in their offensive efficiency number on Ken Palm,
00:48 which has been number one out of all 300 whatever teams for like months on end at this point.
00:54 They have, obviously Mark Sears has been fantastic leading the SEC in scoring,
00:58 but you have so many other weapons that they can use on the offensive end.
01:02 A lot of shooters, this is probably the most three-point shooters that I think a Nato's team has had
01:07 in terms of guys shooting upwards of 38-40%.
01:11 I think Sears is hovering around 48-50.
01:15 Walters is hovering around the same.
01:17 Reitzel's around 45. Estrada's around 38-40.
01:21 There's just so many different ways this offense can hurt its opponents.
01:26 On the defensive end, it's been a work in progress.
01:30 That's kind of been well-documented throughout the season.
01:33 I think if you asked me a month ago, it would have been a much lower grade.
01:37 I think over the past couple weeks, especially here at the start of SEC play,
01:42 they've gotten a lot better on the defensive end.
01:45 I think the hustle, the effort, the intensity, that all has been kind of taken up a notch.
01:50 Guys are understanding that if they want to win games, they can't just play offense.
01:55 They're going to have to play defense to be able to compete in the SEC.
01:58 Then you look at these first three games.
02:00 Vanderbilt, they guarded decently well on the road.
02:02 Then they held South Carolina to 47 points at home,
02:05 holding any high-major SEC team to below 50 is an incredible performance.
02:10 Then went on the road to Mississippi State, got a really gritty win
02:13 where I thought they played really good defense, especially on the interior with Grant Nelson.
02:17 If I was to give it a letter grade, probably between a C and a B,
02:23 maybe a B-minus, something like that, because they've improved over the course of the season.
02:29 They're not where they need to be.
02:31 I think their Ken Palm defensive efficiency number is hovering around 60, which isn't terrible.
02:36 You think about the team two years ago. They were in the '90s.
02:39 This team was in the '90s about a month ago.
02:43 That just shows the improvement that they've had.
02:45 Overall, probably a B or so in terms of grade.
02:51 I think they've obviously not necessarily met some expectations that people have for them in terms of record.
02:58 You look at 11-5 and you look at about a month ago they were 6-5.
03:03 But we saw them against those really tough teams in December be able to compete,
03:07 and I think they've taken that and have improved.
03:10 Now they've set themselves up to be able to compete really strongly in the SEC
03:15 and potentially be a team that gets a double-by
03:18 or even competes for an SEC regular season title,
03:21 depending on how they do against some of the other top contenders.
03:25 Yeah, I think I'm going to be on a similar track to you.
03:28 You literally can't get better than the offense that Alabama's had,
03:32 at least efficiency stats-wise. That's got to be an A-plus.
03:35 Really, if you look at these first 16 games, if you include all of them,
03:38 yes, they've played better as of recent.
03:40 So I think this grade will go up in the second half of the season.
03:43 That's what NATO wants.
03:45 But I think I would give it around a C,
03:47 and so that would put us in an average of a B overall for this first half.
03:51 I think the five losses is maybe a little more than you would have wanted.
03:55 But obviously they played some really tough competition, like you said, in December,
03:59 that I think is helping them now, helped them win that game at Mississippi State.
04:02 A close game on the road at the end.
04:04 They had that experience of playing in some of these tough games.
04:07 I think the grade right now would be a B.
04:09 I think, you know, obviously, famously, Nate Oates was a high school teacher.
04:13 I think we can see that grade go up by the end of the year,
04:16 and Alabama, I think, has its best basketball ahead of it
04:19 with its most important games ahead.
04:21 And we'll kind of reassess once we get to the end of the regular season
04:24 to see where the crimson tide is.
04:26 But that will wrap up today's "Just a Minute."
04:28 Thank you so much for watching.
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