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 Ronald Steele?'" Pickett recalled. "And I was like, 'I haven't heard. What happened?'"
Somewhat shocked, Doris Hall went on to tell her son that Ronald 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 Ronald 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.
Torrance is a sophomore who averaged 3.0 points and 1.3 assists last season.
Pickett is a freshman with a reputation as more of an attacking scorer than a distributor.
In a perfect world, both would be fighting to back up Ronald Steele this season, and not much more. But due to circumstances they will be asked to do much more, and so the obvious question is whether they can.
Is an NCAA Tournament still possible without Ronald Steele?
What about the NIT?
Talking to Gottfried, it's clear he has his doubts, and that he has expressed them publicly hasn't been lost on Torrance and Pickett. They know what people are thinking, know what people are saying, know that Alabama was 1-5 against SEC opponents last season when Ronald Steele played less than 34 minutes. They know the masses aren't expecting much, and that Gottfried is thankful Nick Saban is capable of keeping everybody distracted until at least late December.
But Torrance and Pickett also know a unique opportunity has been presented, and if they can flourish then it'll make for one of the great stories in the nation.
"Ron was an All-American and it's going to be a big loss, but I still think we're going to be a really good team," Torrance said. "That's our motivation. Everybody thinks we can't make it without Ron, but we want to show them we can."
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