Gee Reaches for New Heights in Junior Season
2/16/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
Alonzo Gee received the full-court pass in stride at Coppin State’s 3-point line, dribbled once and took three steps.
With a pair of Coppin State defenders trailing behind, Gee had two steps on the next-closest man, and about three feet away from the basket he planted both his feet and jumped straight up, facing the rim.
With both hands on the ball, Gee began a counter-clockwise spin in the air, cocking the ball behind his head and making a full turn, then furiously smashing it through the basket as a defender swatted behind him. It was a complete 360-degree rotation, and in an otherwise uneventful Alabama win, it had brought the crowd to its feet and the rest of the country to attention.
Though it was just two of Gee’s 26 points in the game, that night the dunk was named SportsCenter’s number one play of the day for Dec. 23, 2006. The clip began making its rounds on the Internet and YouTube.com, where it took its place among the anthology of Alonzo Gee fast-break dunks that were already a staple on the Web.
The moment was just one of many Gee has provided since arriving to the Alabama campus from Riviera Beach, Fla. in 2005 as a high school sensation. An athletic guard, Gee’s dunks have almost become commonplace at Alabama basketball games.
But what does head coach Mark Gottfried think of the alley-oops? The 360s?
“I don’t know what his attitude is because I haven’t missed one and I really don’t want to miss one,” Gee said. “So I really don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”
Gee, who came to Alabama in the same highly-regarded recruiting class as juniors Richard Hendrix and Brandon Hollinger, arrived to the UA campus with a high school r??sum?? that backs up his athletic 6-foot-6, 219-pound frame. He averaged 21 points and seven rebounds as a senior at Palm Beach Gardens Dwyer High School in 2005, leading his team to the consecutive Class 5A state titles. His final year, he earned All-State and was named the “South Florida Sun-Sentinel” Player of the Year.
But once he arrived to Alabama, he said, he had to make adjustments to the college system??adjustments that were made easier thanks to some Crimson Tide upperclassmen who had already walked in his footsteps.
“From high school, I would say it wasn’t the speed of the game as much as it was just learning all the plays and learning the system, learning how to play within the system,” Gee said. “We had Evan Brock, Jean Felix here, we had some good guards here before me. At practice it was always tough but that made it easy for me in the games.”
Gee carried over the momentum from his high school performances by earning Freshman All-SEC honors his first season, averaging almost nine points in 31 games. Last year, Gee started all 32 games for the Crimson Tide and averaged more than 12 points and five rebounds and was named co-winner of the team’s “Guy Lee Turner Defensive Award.”
This year, Gee is thriving in an offense that must look to production from its more experienced players with perhaps its most experienced, Ronald Steele, out for the season taking a medical redshirt. Without Steele in the lineup, Gee knows teams will turn to defend Hendrix down low, but doesn’t feel any pressure from it.
Why would he? It just gives him more opportunities with the ball in his hands.
“Ron was a big part of our team,” Gee said. “With him being out, they’re going to key down low because Richard is a main part of our team too. It doesn’t put any pressure on us because if we do things in the game it’s going to open things up for him. If he does things in the game it’s going to open it up for us.”
From the sidelines, Steele has watched the progression of the Alabama guards and has seen them mature early in the season for the Tide. While rehabbing, Steele has assumed the role of coach and mentor to his teammates, still shooting around with them at practice and giving game-time advice.
It’s eased his nerves, he said, to see the team’s guard-play carry on without him, despite opponents’ tendencies to focus under the basket on Hendrix.
“When a guy’s getting 20 points and 20 rebounds they’re going to key to stop him,” Steele said. “I think the guards are realizing they’ve got opportunities to make names for themselves and to play well and we’re going to need them to play well because it’s only going to get worse as the season goes along.”
Gee, who has also seen time this season playing inside for the Crimson Tide, returned home last summer to train closer to his family in Florida. He has had to get used to the transition of being the quiet freshman from Florida to being the often-outspoken team veteran he knows he has to be on the floor.
Off the court, Gee, who is an artist and sketches in his free time, has had no problem in a leadership role. In 2007, he was named winner of the Robert Scott Christian Leader Award??an award, he said, that is due in large to his mother, Darlene.
“It means a lot to me because I was raised in the church and that’s all my mom taught me, to put God first,” he said. “It’s what she always taught me.”
When asked about the Coppin State 360-degree dunk, Gee smiles and nods his head. He knows he has had to adjust to a different-look Alabama offense, had to adjust to playing with his back to the basket, and as a result has foregone slam dunks earlier in the year for more conservative layups.
But he drops hints to the fact that he may not even view the 360-degree dunk from last season as the best in his repertoire. Could it be possible that there is actually something more impressive??something that, with a catch in stride and three steps inside the lane, could bring a crowd to its feet even faster?
“I can do a lot more,” he says with a smile. “I’d just have to show you.”
