Tide Freshmen Adapt, Contribute Early in First Season
2/18/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
Senario Hillman and Justin Knox each thought they were ready for college basketball.
They knew there would be a slight learning curve, that the game would be faster, the players would be better, but with each being a highly-recruited high school athlete, they thought it would just be a matter of time until they adapted and continued on seamlessly into college basketball.
Then they met Richard Hendrix.
There was something different, something almost dangerous about matching up physically with the 6-foot-9-inch, 255-pound junior. First, Senario Hillman, eight inches shorter and 67 pounds lighter, got introduced.
“My problem is getting screened,” he said. “In high school I didn’t have to worry about getting picked or anything like that. When Richard comes and screens me, man, it feels like I’m going to get knocked to the floor.”
Then Knox, who had offers out of high school from every major SEC program, including Arkansas, Georgia and LSU, felt it.
“When I got to practice I knew it was going to be hard,” Knox said, “but that first week he was really killing me.”
Hillman and Knox are two of three Alabama freshmen benefiting from having a first-team preseason all-SEC and John Wooden Award candidate as a teammate in a season that has seen each, along with freshman Rico Pickett, garner serious early playing time. Together, the trio, which came to Alabama rated as a top 25 recruiting class by rivals.com, has taken major strides toward contributing to the team by adjusting to the speed and challenge of the college game.
For Knox, the journey to Alabama didn’t take him far. A Tuscaloosa native, the former Central High School star was named the 2007 Gatorade Player of the Year and Alabama 4A State Player of the Year while averaging 16 points and 15 rebounds per game as a senior for the Falcons.
After garnering heavy attention from colleges like Cincinnati and Columbia, it was Alabama he said, that had the total package he was looking for in a school, both athletically and academically.
“As they started recruiting me harder and harder I realized it was the best place for me to be a part of,” Knox said. “They had a good basketball program and academically it was a good choice for me.”
With Hendrix and sophomores Yamene Coleman and Demetrius Jemison all seeing playing time for Alabama under the basket, early playing time for Knox, a 6-foot-9, 236-pound forward, has not been as pronounced as it has for his freshmen teammates, who have had to man spots in a backcourt that is without senior Ronald Steele this season.
But that’s just fine for Knox, who has taken encouragement from each of the big men, as well as Alabama’s coaches.
“All the big mean on the team were an inspiration as well as our big-man coach James Holland,” Knox said. “They really gave me a lot of advice on how to play through mistakes during games and tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
The story for Hillman and Pickett has been a little different early this season in the Alabama backcourt. Without Steele, each has seen significant playing time at point and shooting guard, with Pickett averaging more than 17 minutes per game and Hillman more than 15 through Alabama’s first eight games.
For Pickett, who wasn’t expecting to see so much early playing time, hearing about Steele’s medical redshirt for the 2007-08 season changed his role from backup to starter. The rest of the team, he said, has had no problem responding to often being led on the floor by a freshman.
“My role changed a lot because coming in I knew I was going to be a backup point guard and now I have an opportunity to start and be a leader on this team and try and lead this team to be as best as we can be,” he said. “They’re behind me. They believe in me and everybody’s up and keeping my confidence up and is 100 percent behind me.”
If high school qualifications are any indicator, it should be no surprise that each guard has played such a crucial role early for the Tide. Pickett, a native of Decatur, was named the Alabama 5A State Player of the Year last year while averaging more than 18 points and six assists for a Decatur team that advanced to the state’s Final Four.
Hillman, an Irwinton, Ga. native, was a 2007 Parade All-American and four-time Georgia All-State representative. Sporting a 41-inch vertical jump and offers from schools like Florida State and LSU, it was head coach Mark Gottfried’s coaching style that persuaded him to come to Tuscaloosa.
“When I came on a visit, I liked how coach Gottfried coached and I liked the campus,” Hillman said. “I didn’t want to be too far from Georgia so my parents could come see me play.”
Along with junior Brandon Hollinger, Hillman and Pickett have helped form a trio that has combined to run the Alabama offense in each game this season. From the sidelines, Steele watches every game in street clothes, living and dying with every shot as much as any player in uniform.
With leadership from Alabama’s upperclassmen, he said he has already noticed how the trio has matured and improved physically on the floor.
“They’ve done a good job,” Steele said. “They’ve done a really good job doing what coach has asked them to do. It’s a tough position to put young guys in, on that stage, but we’re going to need all three guys to play well and I think they’ve handled it well being unselfish and understanding that each game has a different game plan. I think the team has responded well getting behind them, guys like Richard, Alonzo [Gee] and [senior Mykal] Riley.”
And with Steele out, Pickett says he knows his role, as well as the role of his fellow freshmen, will continue to amplify as teams start to key on Hendrix under the basket and attempt to exploit Alabama’s inexperience at guard.
That, he said, was no surprise.
“We can take it,” he said. “We can do it. We know going in they’re going to try and double Richard and make sure he can’t do anything, so we know going in we’ve got to knock down shots.”
