After 11 years and five NCAA appearances, the Alabama Crimson Tide decided to fire head basketball coach Mark Gottfried. This doesnt come as surprise to many in the SEC because he was believed to be on the hot seat if results werent coming and thats exactly what happened.
I think that he was a good coach but from what I have been reading he was a lot like a "Tom Crean" where he was a great recruiter but didnt get the results out on the court. Thats not to say there was ever a time where I felt Crean should be ousted, he only really had two down years in his career. He hasnt made the tournament in the last two years and has failed to get to the Sweet 16 since 2003-04. In addition, he hasnt won an SEC West title since 2004 so the Tide really have been an above average to average team in the SEC in the past couple of years.
Another major aspect of Gottfried is there was a disconnect between him and his players because they never seemed to want to stay in school. See Richard Hendrix, Mo Williams, Gerald Wallace or Ronald Steele who had a promising career to begin with then left the school because over countless knee injuries but people believe there is more to that story.
Bama needs to bring in a good mid-major coach who knows how to win because with a couple good years of recruiting, they can be a top team in the SEC. It doesnt take much to win in that conference especially in the SEC West where we havent see a dominate team come out of there since the Big Baby days at LSU.
In my opinion, this was a sort of calculated move by Alabama because they got rid of their football coach and move to bigger/better things with Nick Saban. Now in my mind, they want to do the same thing with basketball.
-Charlie.
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