Alabama coach Anthony Grant, a former UF assistant, is looking to move past last season’s suspensions of four starters and have a more mature team. While big man JaMychel Green’s presence will be missed in the post, the Crimson Tide still have size inside with 7-foot center Moussa Geye in the lineup.
Alabama coach Anthony Grant;
On entering his fourth season at Alabama and how the program has progressed:
“My first task coming in was to try and build a program and obviously try to change the culture. Here in year four, I think we’re on our way. Obviously, we’re not where we aspire to be, but certainly I feel like we’ve made progress. We have a team this year where we returned a majority of the guys that played last year. We have 10 scholarship guys; at least eight of them got some kind of level of experience last year. We are excited about that. At the same time, we’re a young team. We have one senior in the program, one junior that’s really played significant minutes and couple of other juniors
that have grown with the program, and the rest of our team are freshman and sophomores. So, we’re excited about the opportunity we have. I like the guys that we have and the direction our program is headed in. Now the challenge is to continue building upon that and take steps towards building a championship type of program”
On what he skills he looks for in a player when recruiting:
“One of the biggest things for us is that we recruit to our style of play. We’re a team that prides ourselves on our identity. We’re a pressing team that wants to play up‐tempo, so we try to recruit players that fit what we do. The skill set we look for is guys that have the ability to handle, pass, and shoot the basketball, while playing at the tempo we want to play at and that can defend to the identity we want to establish”
On comparing Alabama’s past and present defense:
“It will be a work in progress. Obviously, as I mentioned, we lost some key parts to our defense last year. For every team, you’ve got to establish an identity and I know what I want our identity to be on the defensive end. But, we’ve got to be able to buy into that and accomplish that. I think that will determine in large part the success that we have”
Courtesy of SEC Digital Network