It’s hard to believe, what with Georgia in the rear-view and Tennessee on the horizon, but Alabama basketball starts in just about 10 days, with a scrimmage vs Wake Forest live in Boutwell Auditorium.

There are still plenty of tickets at the link below. But for those of you who can’t make it, Alabama will also be streaming it live.

Welcome to 2019, Alabama!

Speaking of hoops, SEC Media Days are in just one week. We have our speaking schedule, and player attendees:

As the men’s college basketball season looms, the annual SEC Media Day event will be on Oct. 15 at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Mountain Brook, Ala.

It was announced on Tuesday morning that the Alabama men’s basketball team will be represented by head coach Nate Oats and Crimson Tide guards Mark Sears and Latrell Wrightsell Jr., who will be previewing the rest of the roster and the upcoming season. These three will speak to the media from 12:30-2:35 p.m. CT.

Glad Trelly is getting some love. That dude went through hell with his injury luck last season. And with Youngblood sidelined for months, the burden of being the shooting guard is going to fall on his shoulders a bunch more.

Is that all? No sir, it’s not. Because guess what happens on Friday?

HANG THE BANNER, BABY!

The University of Alabama has announced the men’s basketball team will host its 2024 NCAA Final Four banner reveal on Friday, Oct. 11 with the event beginning at 8:30 p.m.

Public tickets are currently on sale for $10. Yea Alabama members will receive priority seating and students receiving free admission.

Fans can join Yea Alabama to support Alabama student-athletes at Yea-Alabama.com, with monthly memberships starting at $18. Subscribers are able to access to exclusive content and event invitations throughout the year.

Crimson Chaos/students and Yea Alabama members will receive early access to the event.

Event timeline:

7:30 p.m. – Doors open for Yea Alabama members and Crimson Chaos/students

8:00 p.m. – Doors open for the public ticketholders

8:30 p.m. – Event begins with team introductions

8:35 p.m. – 3-point contest

8:50 p.m. – Dunk contest

9:05 p.m. – Final Four banner and ring reveal

9:10 p.m. – Interview with Chris Stewart and Nate Oats

9:20 p.m. – Scrimmage tips off

More details below, including giveaways and merch

This is a very interesting piece in CBS CBB: How exactly will Derrion Reed fit into the roster?

Derrion Reid, Alabama

Realistic expectation: Starting wing

Burning college question: How does Nate Oats mix his best defensive lineup with his best five offensive players?

* * *

It might be a delicate push-pull for Oats all year because of the depth and lineup flexibility Alabama has amassed. There are lineup options galore for maybe college basketball’s deepest roster. But Reid can make it a moot point if the defensive impact is legit and the shooting comes along because he, simply, looks different than most of the other pieces on this roster.

It is a question that I asked a few months ago, in our Meet the New Guys piece on him:

If there is any major knock on his game it is that he is not as active in defense as you’d like to see. Reid doesn’t loaf, and it is hard to take away how much of that deficit is a function of the AAU style of play. When he is engaged, he’s a nimble defender and possesses a nice break on passes. So, he’s plainly reading ball movement right.

How that gets answered will go a long way towards determining whether he starts or not. As we said in June:

Still, the positives vastly outweigh the deficits in his game. And if that good combination of skills reminds you of someone, it should. The comparisons to Brandon Miller’s game are not unwarranted. Though it is probably not fair to put that much pressure on Reid, and Miller was probably further along as an entering Freshman, Reid certainly looks the part of the next great athletic Tide forward.

BMill was a guaranteed Day One starter. Until we see some scrimmages, I’m not sure that Reed is, despite being the highest ranked recruit Alabama has ever signed.

Did Alabama’s defense struggle on Saturday because calls were coming in late?

It could be.

In an interview yesterday, Moore said that the delay in getting the calls to the field made players antsy — from the D-line all the way back. But that is Wommack’s style. He relays calls pretty late, trying to get players in the perfect position.

One reason why Wommack may have been slow in relaying the defensive calls against Vanderbilt was because of the Commodores’ methodical pace. Vanderbilt routinely let the play clock run below five seconds before snapping the football. Consequently, there shouldn’t have been much urgency to align the defense, so long Wommack was making his calls before the helmet communications system automatically cut off when the play clock hit 15 seconds.

Nonetheless, the slow transmission of Wommack’s defensive wishes were a source of concern throughout the defensive unit, according to Moore.

“I think that was the feedback I’ve gotten from the D-line all the way back to the secondary,” Moore said. “We feel like if we get the call in just a little bit quicker, it’ll give us time to just line up and go whip the man in front of us.”

Interesting to know, though I’m not sure I would have broadcast that to the world. You have just told every team remaining on the schedule that a snail’s pace will wreck communication on the field, and completely take the defense out of its rhythm. And what happens when the inverse happens? When teams are going so fast that calls aren’t relayed quickly and the defense has to operate at tempo? Well, we’ve seen that one already: USF.

That’s going to have to be cleaned up though — from the coaches on down. You can’t run a defensive scheme that is predicated on getting the call and having 10-12 seconds to get settled in and figure out your assignments. Sure, it may look great against the Wisconsins and Georgias of the world. But the Tide has faced a glacial team and a lightning-fast one, and the defense struggled both times. There are several more fast teams left on the schedule: Missouri, Tennessee, South Carolina among them; just as there are two very slow ones remaining (Auburn, Oklahoma).

Mal’s oversharing is probably why the Old Man never let players speak to the media during the season.

On the topic of Mal…

I got yelled at by do-no-wrong Gumps and sunshine-pumpers on Monday for telling Malachi to man-up and apologize to Diego Pavia, which he had not done as of Monday, with his mea non culpa. Monday night I heard from some UA #sauces that publicly calling him and the PR apparatchiks to the carpet had pissed off quite a few people in the Athletic Department (but, really, what’s new?), at a time when everyone else was glazing them.

But, lo and behold. What happened yesterday?
Malachi called Diego Pavia and apologized.

And I’m proud of him for doing so. We have to be accountable for ourselves and our actions. Good on you, Mal. That couldn’t have been an easy call to make.

Anti-Gumping: It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. So, feel free to keep yelling at me.

F-Bomb is trying to stir up trouble again, this time asking whether Alabama’s loss to Vandy was its worst ever…while at the same time trying to soft-sell that it’s not that bad.

“We all know what Vanderbilt has done under Clark Lea, but that’s not how the nation views it,” Finebaum said. “The nation still views Vanderbilt as a punching bag, as a pinata, as something that is tantamount to a middle school and that’s unfair, but it’s also the reality, and that’s why this this particular game, has sent shockwaves across not only college football, but I mean … I’ve seen on literally every major news network, and new shows.

The answer is “No, not even close to the worst loss.” It’s not even a bad loss.

Per Sagarin, Vandy is the 43rd ranked team — solid, above-average bowl team, in other words. And Vanderbilt’s efficiency metrics are better than that: 33rd overall offensively, 26th in per-play efficiency, 31st in drive efficiency, 23rd in rushing efficiency, 27th in preventing negative drives. In other words, the Commodores have a Top 20% offense.

And if Vandy “is viewed as a punching bag,” perhaps it’s because nitwits like Finebaum keep perpetuating hot takes like “is this the worst loss in program history?” It’s not even the worst loss by a No. 1 team in history. Does no one remember the biggest upset in college football ever? When you ask loaded questions like that you implicitly reinforce the notion that Vandy are schlubs. It’s very dismissive of a program that knows who they are, have been patient, have run a clean program, leveraged the portal within their means, and as a result have gotten a little better each year.

How did players react to the loss when the smoke cleared? Mainly by regrouping and doing a lot of soul-searching.

But I think this is where you’re seeing where the more even-keeled temperament of DeBoer is paying dividends with a generation who are uniquely lacking in resilience as a cohort:

By Tuesday, UA players were well into prep for Saturday’s matchup with South Carolina. While speaking to reporters, some of them revealed how they had spent the day following the 40-35 defeat in Nashville.

“It’s really important just not to overreact,” tight end Robbie Ouzts said. “At the ends of the day, that’s part of football, wins and losses. And we’re fortunate here to not have many losses, but you just, but you just gotta use it as a learning experience. You gotta go back, watch the film, see what you did right, see what you did wrong. Just correct it and then really have a growth mindset.”

More player reactions here:

So, I saved the worst for last. Structural issues.

If you noticed, today is not labeled as “Gump Day,” because there are some truly ghastly happenings in progress. One of which is simply going to make you wince, cry, rage, puke, (insert your own verb here).

First, the good news: The same judge who butchered Alston and O’Bannon seemed to be on track to do so again with the House settlement. However, she did finally give preliminary approval yesterday. So that’s one headache behind us

Next, the mixed news: The NCAA did finally shorten the transfer window to just 30 total days. But what was not done leaves the sport far worse off. They did not act on eliminating the four-game sit-out window, which is now being used to weaponize NIL and playing time disputes (shout-out to Jeheim!) The Portal window still starts before the Bowl season in football, and the second weekend of the NCAA tournament. And they left the 30-day quitter hole open for when coaches depart. Ugh.

Finally, the bad news is here. And it is about as bad as it gets.

Enshittification is real. I give you “Project Rudy:”

The latest re-imagination of college football now includes a multi-billion-dollar proposal spearheaded by former Disney executives for a system funded by private equity, sources confirmed to CBS Sports on Tuesday.

The 70-team structure that would seemingly exclude the bottom tier of the FBS would be funded by private equity firm Smash Capital, sources told CBS Sports. The project would include $9 million infused into a system that would expand the college football postseason, change scheduling and feature tiered revenue distribution.

All those influences, thanks to conference realignment, are already featured as the College Football Playoff field expands from four teams to 12 this season. What were formerly marquee nonconference games in the SEC and Big Ten are now conference games in those two leagues. Going forward, those two leagues will also evenly split 59% of the CFP revenue distribution.

The new proposal, however, would eliminate all games against current Group of Five and FCS teams. The 70 schools would be shopped as a single-entity media rights package. It is not immediately clear which 70 schools would be included.

The proposal, dubbed “Project Rudy,” would mostly likely begin after all the current major media rights deals expire around the 2031 season.

For a while now, “70” has been the magic number bandied about by SEC and Big Ten honchos. And despite the subterfuge, it’s pretty clear that they’ve been planning this P5 schism for ages now. Hopping into bed with private equity, cutting out the G5 and FCS, and shopping the collective rights as a packaged deal makes this seem like a fait accompi at this point.

And, according to a Y! report, PE firms have already been pitched on the super league:

Wanna’ know my suspicions? I think they’ve been planning this for a while, because the SEC and Big 10 have been making a series of escalatory and unreasonable demands in things like playoff structure and payout, enforcement, and even the House settlement. Coincidentally, the number always tossed around by the super powers is “70.” They are, in short, manufacturing their own grievances to later justify leaving the collegiate structure entirely, and thus destroying what remains of college football.

The gravedigger of the sport has undoubtedly been short-sighted cashgrabs. But the spade turning over the soil, the three-headed Cerberus slavering at the gates of hell — Jack Swarbrick, Greg Sankey, and Tony Pettiti — are its snapping jaws.

Coincidentally, Pettiti and Sankey are meeting in Nashville this week to “discuss the future of the sport” — on tap are autobids, revenue sharing, and the like; the very things addressed by “Project Rudy.” But to regular fans, you can just call it “selling us down the river.”

Sports journalists, social media, shitheel class action lawyers, a feckless and dickless NCAA, congressional inaction, and reckless federal judges got us into this mess. But it’s only going to get worse.

Believe that.

You know what sucks the most about this? I am increasingly detached and emotionally removed from anything resembling Alabama Football, an adjunct to the University of Alabama, played by students at the University of Alabama. At times there are still glimpses of its collegiate roots, and then it has seems to have some connection to my alma mater.

But more and more, this sport, this team feels like Alabama, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Alabama Board of Trustees. And if I wanted to sink my emotional investment into a semi-pro league, I’d just watch the Lingerie Football League, where they can at least defend a naked bootleg.

Finally, let’s end on a bright spot: the Tuscaloosa American Legion honored Tuscaloosa’s Sergeant Earl D. Gregory yesterday, who earned the Medal of Honor during the Great War, and received his commendation from General Omar Bradley himself:

[Gregory] was assigned to the Headquarters Company, 116th Infantry, 29th Division. He single-handedly captured a German machine gun nest, then proceeded to take down a field artillery position and enter a trench dugout to capture 19 German soldiers.

He was in the battle at Bois-de-Consenvoye, France, on Oct. 8, 1918.

Gregory is reported to have said, “I will get them!” when he left his trench mortar position and charged the enemy lines ahead of the infantry and performed his heroic acts. He was later wounded and spent several months convalescing.

He was presented the Medal of Honor by Maj. Gen. Omar Bradley on April 29, 1919, at Fort Lee, Virginia.

It was far more bad ass than even that.

His official citation states:

With the remark “I will get them,” Sgt. Gregory seized a rifle and a trench mortar shell, which he used as a hand grenade, left his detachment of the trench-mortar platoon, and advancing ahead of the infantry, captured a machine gun and three of the enemy. Advancing still farther from the machine-gun nest, he captured a 7.5 centimeter mountain howitzer and, entering a dugout in the immediate vicinity, singlehandedly captured 19 of the enemy.

Dude is running around with mortar shells for hand grenades, soloing entrenchments, and capturing 19 Kaiser Huns all by himself. He’s a video game character.

Sgt. Gregory didn’t have PTSD; he had nostalgia. What a Gigachad.

Happy(?) Gump Day. Have a safe one down there, Florida. Roll Tide.