Sunday Pulpit: The good, bad and frustrating inconsistency of Alabama hoops
Is it inconsistently consistent or consistently inconsistent?
Whatever the answer is, Alabama head basketball coach Avery Johnson is well-versed in his team’s inability to find a rhythm this season. In many ways, Saturday’s 59-54 loss to Tennessee served as a microcosm of the Crimson Tide’s unpredictability during Johnson’s second year at the helm.
After suffering from slow starts this season, Alabama’s offense raced back and forth across opposite checkerboard baselines at Thompson-Boling Arena on Saturday, torching Tennessee for 36 points on 56.5 percent shooting in the first half to take a 14-point lead into intermission.
However, the Tide’s red-hot start quickly ran out of gas. Alabama shot just 25 percent (6 of 24) in the second half, allowing the Volunteers to pull off a heartbreaking comeback by ending the game on an 11-1 run.
That has more or less been the blueprint to a frustrating season that now sees Alabama sitting at 17-13, 10-8 at the end of regular-season play. One way or another, the Tide has failed to develop any sense of consistency.
On the positive side, Alabama has yet to lose three straight games this season. Although, what will better define this year’s team is its inability to string together three straight wins since the start of SEC play.
The Tide has come close to both sides of the spectrum several times, losing two straight games on three separate occasions, while winning two straight games three times in conference play. However, each peak has been met with a valley, and each valley has been followed by a frustrating sense of false hope.
In truth, Alabama overachieved to an extent this season. The Tide was predicted to finish seventh in the conference in the preseason media poll. Despite its loss Saturday, Alabama will enter the SEC Tournament in Nashville, Tenn., as the No. 5 seed. The team has also improved during Johnson’s second year, going from 8-10 in conference play last season to 10-8 this year.
Disappointment only sets in when the thought of what could have been comes into play. Alabama dropped several winnable games this season, including an RPI-tanking loss at Texas, home games against Auburn and Georgia and Saturday’s meltdown at Tennessee. Swing those games back in the Tide’s favor and Alabama is sitting at 21-9 and 13-5 in the SEC with a two-round bye heading into the SEC Tournament.
Johnson will be the first to remind you it doesn’t work that way. Consistency is built and consistent teams don’t just develop overnight.
"What sometimes people don't understand is it's just not like flipping a switch," Johnson said earlier this season. "If it was, that's what we would do. But we're a team built on defense this year. We've had a sporadic offense. We haven't had great ball-handling and decision-making and we've been a team that turns the ball over at inopportune times and we have had a lot of careless mistakes. We're trying to reduce that with some young guys that handle the ball quite bit and hopefully we'll get there."
In the grand scheme of things, Saturday’s defeat didn’t impact the course of the Tide’s season. Alabama would have finished fifth with either a win or a loss.
“More than worrying about that fifth seed and where we are, I think it’s important for us to be playing good basketball in the conference,” Johnson said Friday before the loss to Tennessee. “If we end up being the fifth seed, if that hold holds true, I just don’t want to be playing bad basketball.”
The truth is, Alabama is playing bad basketball right now. It’s just also playing good basketball, too.
That's something Johnson is going to have to patiently accept.