Happy Monday, everyone. Outside of the men’s basketball debacle in Lexington, it was a fine weekend for the Tide. The softball team did what they were supposed to do in winning five games against inferior competition, the baseball team swept Valpo, women’s basketball notched a key win over a tough Mississippi State squad, and the Gym Tide took care of Georgia in the Power of Pink meet.
aid after Alabama’s 117-95 loss at Kentucky
“Kentucky was ready to play today, and we weren’t. Cal had his guys ready to go. I didn’t. They looked great. We looked awful. Our defensive intensity was not good. I told our guys after the game, we’ve had question marks all year. Those question marks are completely erased today. Everybody knows that we don’t really guard at this point because our effort stunk. Part of the issue was we turned it over, and they scored 29 points off our 16 turnovers. You can’t turn the ball over that much. Our starting backcourt had too many turnovers. We need to do a better job taking care of the ball.
“We had us for giving up 16 points in transition – not including the points off turnovers. So you take the 29 points off turnovers, 16 other points in transition, and all of a sudden, you’re at 45 points before you even get in your halfcourt defense and get a chance to get a stop. And then once we got in the halfcourt, I didn’t think we were that great either.
The Tide didn’t look quite as bad on defense early in the game. Kentucky was hitting everything they tossed toward the basket, and it’s tough not to get discouraged when that happens. Still, it would be different if this team hadn’t had too many lapses on that end of the court already.
The offense was still damn good, in fact good enough to be in the game if Kentucky had merely been reasonably hot rather than unconscious. Can it overcome the defense in March?
Alabama Football Hires Courtney Morgan as Crimson Tide’s General Manager – University of Alabama Athletics
Morgan will be tasked with managing the Crimson Tide’s roster while overseeing and directing the daily operations of both the personnel and recruiting departments. He will help organize the head coaches film evaluations and prospect communication while also organizing transfer portal evaluations. Morgan is also tasked with supervising internal brand management for Alabama football.
“I love working for Coach DeBoer and I am looking forward to continuing the standard that Alabama football has set,” Morgan said. “Everyone on this staff has the same common goal, and we believe in Coach DeBoer’s process of what it takes to win. Trust and hard work are such an important part of success and I’m always ready to go to work and I completely trust Coach DeBoer’s approach to building a program.”
More and more college coaches seem to be hiring GMs, which only makes sense given the current free agency climate. There is no way for a head coach to do his job while constantly recruiting his own roster, which is why some coaches have headed to the NFL. Morgan will be a key cog to Kalen’s success.
Smith: What can we make of Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama staff?
What initially sticks out is the absence of a special teams coordinator. The reported hire of Jay Nunez, who was a senior special teams analyst at Oklahoma from 2022-23, will fill that void on the staff. This is becoming more common in college with schools such as Georgia, USC and Oklahoma utilizing the 10 full-time slots for other positions and delegating special teams to an analyst or multiple depending on the amount of resources devoted to it. Alabama is not bereft of resources available should more support be needed.
In this role, Nunez would be responsible for overseeing all special teams in practice and formulating game plans, but as an analyst he wouldn’t be able to coach on game days. That would mean DeBoer would delegate certain aspects of special teams to other assistants to carry out during games.
