This year, it's Bad 'Bama's turn
The program nobody can figure out now faces an indecipherable future.
Alabama can't decide whether to be an underachieving or overachieving team under Mark Gottfried, though underachieving is winning at the moment. The fifth-seeded Crimson Tide enter the offseason ahead of schedule after losing their first-round NCAA Tournament game Thursday to 12th-seeded Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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| Junior Kennedy Winston, Alabama's best player, is expected to leave for the NBA Draft. (AP) |
Last season, Alabama reversed course, playing under the radar until March, when the eighth-seeded Crimson Tide beat No. 1 Stanford and then No. 5 Syracuse to reach the Elite Eight.
That was a serious swing in momentum. Or it could have been a fluke. Thursday's result suggests fluke.
What happens in the next two months will determine Alabama's fate in 2005-06 and beyond. Its star, junior forward Kennedy Winston, is expected to enter the 2005 NBA Draft. He could come back to school. He could not.
Alabama's best recruit in years, maybe ever, also is eyeballing the 2005 draft. Richard Hendrix is a 6-foot-8 power forward with a developed body and cartoonishly long arms, but he's not ready for the NBA.
Like it matters.
Kwame Brown wasn't ready. Sagana Diop wasn't ready. Ndudi Ebi wasn't ready. Kendrick Perkins. Travis Outlaw. The list of big men who skipped college for the NBA and were drafted despite being unready for the jump is an enormous one.
Hendrix could join that list. Winston could be gone. If neither plays next season for Alabama, which definitely will lose senior scoring guard Earnest Shelton, a spot in the 2006 NCAA Tournament will be a reach.
If Hendrix and Winston both play for the Crimson Tide, the 2006 Final Four is a possibility -- though, judging from three of the past four Marches, not a strong possibility.
