A Steele trap? Tide guards now must take huge step up

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Rico Pickett was just waking up last Monday when his cell phone rang for the first of what he estimated was "about 100 times" in the subsequent hours. News was spreading across the state quickly, from Decatur to Dothan, from Huntsville to Hoover. But apparently sometimes those closest to the situation are indeed the last to know, because Pickett was caught by surprise when his mother briefed him on the developments of Alabama basketball.

"She was like, 'Have you heard about Ron Steele?'" Pickett recalled. "And I was like, 'I haven't heard. What happened?'"

Alabama struggles without Ronald Steele running the offense. (Getty Images)

Somewhat shocked, Doris Hall went on to tell her son that Steele was taking a medical redshirt, that he had decided to rest his surgically repaired yet still-ailing knees the entire season. Consequently, the Crimson Tide were now officially searching for a new starting point guard, and Hall knew that meant Pickett was one of just two candidates.

"She was like, 'You know what you've got to do, right?' and I was like 'What?'" Pickett said. "And she said, 'You've got to step up.'"

Missing the point

Sunday afternoon on the Alabama campus, and Mark Gottfried was sitting in the stands of something called the CAVE watching the Crimson Tide volleyball team with his daughter, Mary Layson, who just might play in the same facility one day. By all accounts, she's pretty darn good, particularly for a 14-year-old. And she's also well-versed on the sport, proof being how she was nice enough to explain why that one player was wearing a different color jersey than her teammates because, frankly, I had no idea and it was confusing to watch.

"She's the libero," Mary Layson said, and that meant nothing to me. Recognizing the confusion, Gottfried stepped in and tried to put it in familiar terms. "She's like a point guard," he said, to which I replied: "Can she dribble? If so, maybe you should take her."

He laughed.

And I laughed.

And really, what can you do but laugh?

"It is what it is," Gottfried said with a shrug. "This isn't the NBA. There are no 10-day contracts. We'll just play with what we've got."

It has been exactly one week since Gottfried announced his starting point guard and former All-American Ron Steele will miss the season while trying to finally fully recover from multiple knee surgeries. So Alabama is about to experience its second consecutive season without a healthy version of the player it expected to be its floor leader.

It's a hard way to live, particularly in a league that has produced the past two national champions. But times of desperation always lead to opportunities for somebody, and those somebodies are Mikhail Torrance and Rico Pickett, one of whom will be the Crimson Tide's starting point guard when the season opens Nov. 9 with a home game against Troy.

For a team loaded with accomplished veterans -- namely Richard Hendrix (14.6 points per game last season), Alonzo Gee (12.6 points per game last season) and Mykal Riley (12.6 points per game last season) -- this is not an ideal situation. Veterans are only as effective as the guy feeding them the ball, and there's simply no way to know how effective Torrance and Pickett will be, or even if they'll have a positive effect.