Chris Stewart Sports

9:15 a.m. CST – Another rough week on the road

Two games. Two losses. Such is life on the road for Alabama Basketball. To be more accurate, I should say 17 games, with 17 losses.

There is nothing quite like a plane or bus trip back home after a road victory. Or so people say. It’s been so long since I’ve experienced one, I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like. 

At the start of Sunday’s game in Baton Rouge, the site of Alabama’s last road win back on January 31, 2007, it looked like that streak could finally come to an end. The Tide led 11-2 about 6:00 into the game.

Then LSU started playing defense, and Alabama stopped making good decisions.

It was over.

A 17-0 run, combined with a hip pointer suffered by JaMychal Green, was more than enough to turn a nine-point deficit into a 12-point halftime lead. Then, in the second half, a 10 minute stretch where the team seemed to start feeling sorry for themselves for the first time since Mark Gottfried’s departure, allowed the Tigers lead to balloon to 23.

A timeout at the 3:00 mark featured what we tend to call in the south as a “Come to Jesus meeting” between interim head coach Philip Pearson and his team, resulting in a stretch run that made the score more respectable, but far from satisfying.

This will be one of the most challenging week’s in Pearson’s coaching career. His background as a player and graduate assistant under Wimp Sanderson, to whom he still talks to on a frequent basis, lends me to believe he would like to spend this week reacting the way his mentor would after a game like this Sunday’s – with bone-jarring, gut-busting practices.

However, he is probably also wondering how a squad, that has not had the whip cracked in that manner, would respond. It’s a tough call.

And these are tough times.