Tide Hoops Opens Exhibition Play in Canada Saturday
8/30/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
TUSCALOOSA ?? Mark Gottfried will take his 2007-08 version of Crimson Tide basketball to Ottawa Canada for the Labor Day holiday weekend.
Alabama will play four exhibition games within three days in a tour designed to give its team, particularly its freshmen, some additional practice dates and competition.
“It gives you a little more of a guide and lets you know what you need to work on when the real practice starts in October,” said All-Southeastern Conference junior forward Richard Hendrix. “It’s a little different starting off in August, but like Coach (Gottfried) says, you look for opportunity to play, and when you get it, you take advantage of it.”
By the time Alabama leaves for Ottawa, it will have had 10 days of practice behind it in addition to the four exhibition games it will play in Canada.
“It’s really good that we are getting these extra practices in and these games in Canada, especially for the freshmen. It gives us some experience that’s going to help us, I think, when the real season comes,” said freshman forward Justin Knox. “I’ve learned a lot. It’s very fast-paced. It’s coming all in at one time, and I’m just trying to keep up and take it all in and use this time and these extra practices to see what I need to do to become better for when we start up in October and be better prepared for the season.”
While it is not a tournament for Alabama, the college teams involved in the Ottawa area have deemed it “NCAA Weekend” as its Canadian college teams play teams from the U.S. It begins on Friday night with Illinois playing Carleton University, the Canadian Interuniversity Sports national champions for the past five straight seasons. Alabama opens its play on Saturday at 11 a.m. CT against McGill University, the first of two games it plays in a single day. On Saturday night at 7 p.m. CT, Alabama plays the University of Ottawa. Sunday night at 7 CT it plays Carleton and the exhibition winds out on Monday, September 3 with another game against Ottawa, this one at 11 a.m. CT. The team returns to Tuscaloosa Monday night.
Villanova plays Carleton on Saturday night and Queen’s University on Sunday and then wraps its play with a game Monday against the Ottawa-Carleton All-Stars.
The games will be played using the international 3-point line and a 30-second clock. All other rules of the game will be the normal NCAA rules.
The NCAA allows institutions to participate in such events every four years. Some teams opt to take the trips longer and earlier in the summer. However incoming freshmen are not allowed to participate until classes have officially begun. Alabama opted to wait to include its three freshmen, Knox, Senario Hillman and Rico Pickett.
In August of 2003, prior to the start of classes, Alabama took a similar trip to Nassau and played five games against teams from the Bahamas, including its national and junior national teams. The Tide only had one freshman that year, Jermareo Davidson. He did not make the trip because of the NCAA rule regarding freshmen, but the strategy of the extra practice time helped the team. Alabama was replacing a senior-led 2003 team that included four year starters Erwin Dudley, Kenny Walker and Terrance Meade as well as Mo Williams, who had just left following his sophomore year for the NBA. Kennedy Winston was the lone fulltime returning starter. The “backups” who made the trip to the Bahamas and benefitted from the extra time included Earnest Shelton, Antoine Pettway and Chuck Davis. By season’s end, that crew had led Alabama to its best run ever in the NCAA, the 2004 Elite 8.
Alabama held its first practice for the Canada trip on August 19. Thursday’s practice will be its tenth and final one before the trip.
“Practices have been pretty good. I think we’ve gotten a lot done,” said Alabama coach Mark Gottfried who begins his 10th season with the Tide. “We still have a long way to go and a lot of things to work on but I think that’s what the trip will provide, a good opportunity to work on some things. I think our guys have worked pretty hard. I’ve been pleased with their effort. We’re just going to have to improve a great deal.”
While he will make the trip with the team to Canada, Alabama will play these exhibition games without senior All-SEC point guard Ronald Steele. He’s recovering from arthroscopic surgery on his left knee on August 23.
“I’m feeling good,” said Steele on Wednesday. “I’ve progressed more than they expected so, hopefully that’s a good sign and I’ll continue to do it. I’ve been cleared to just shoot right now, and then next week we’re going to evaluate and see where it is then.”
Steele has been courtside for Alabama’s practices all week, observing the team while he goes through his rehab workouts on the sideline. He says he likes what he’s seeing from his teammates.
“Everybody’s been doing really well. You can tell we’re an older team because we’re so much farther ahead than we were last year and the young players have picked it up really fast, so I think we’re going to do really well,” said Steele.
Hendrix has been on the floor helping lead the team through each of the practices and has also made his own observations.
“It’s been tough practices, but they’ve been good for us. Hopefully we can find out a lot about ourselves on the trip to Canada and carry it on into the season. Hopefully this will make us better,” said Hendrix. “We’ve got a lot of good guard play. We’re really deep at that position. And apparently we are trying to up the tempo or whatever, so hopefully we can see a lot of good out of that.”
Once Alabama returns from the trip, it will await the official opening of practice. That will be on Friday, October 12.
