ball program recently, after his best three players – sophomore point guard Trevor Releford, senior forward JaMychal Green and junior forward Tony Mitchell – made headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Now, the team is trying to continue its push towards an elusive NCAA tournament bid, with every game carrying heightened importance.
“I think our guys have moved forward,” Grant said. “I think we understand, like with everything else, you can only control what you can control. So for our guys, it’s about getting prepared for our next opponent and trying to eliminate distractions.”
It will be a lot easier to tune out outside voices with some good news in the personnel department. Grant said Tuesday that freshman forward Nick Jacobs will be available for Thursday’s game at Arkansas after getting a mouth infection from an injury during practice.
Releford will also be available after suffering a blow to the head in practice and showing concussion-like symptoms. The news comes at a great time for the Crimson Tide.
“[Arkansas] is a very talented team,” Grant said. “They gave us a great game here at home. In a lot of ways, I thought we were very fortunate to win the game. Going on the road to their place will be an even bigger challenge.”
In the last meeting, Arkansas tripped up the Tide in the second half after a switch to zone defense. After trailing by seven points at halftime, Arkansas’s zone defense allowed the Razorbacks to take a two-point lead with less than seven minutes remaining, until a late 9-0 run sealed the victory for the Tide.
“We have to constantly stay aggressive,” Steele said. “I think early in the season when we saw zone, we froze up and got timid a little bit. I think we have to make sure we stay aggressive on it.”
Getting a win in Bud Walton Arena has been especially difficult since Mike Anderson returned to Arkansas as head coach. Anderson was an assistant at Arkansas from 1985 to 2002, when the Razorbacks won five conference championships, appeared in three Final Fours and won the 1994 national championship with teams that were put under the “40 Minutes of Hell” label.
Alabama is used to playing in difficult environments on the road in the Southeastern Conference, however.
“We understand that the crowd can’t come on the court and play,” Steele said. “The game is going to be settled on the court. You have to put all of that out of your mind. Once you start playing, you don’t really think about it too much.”
The Razorbacks are stumbling into this game on a two-game losing streak, losing on the road to Tennessee 77-58 on Feb. 15, then suffering its only home loss of the season to the Florida Gators 98-68 on Saturday.
“I thought in their last game, Florida played extremely well,” Grant said. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do when a team comes in playing the way they played.”
Grant continued, “If you look at their entire body of work, I think they’ve played 17 games at home and lost once. They’ve been very successful at home.”
