http://www.al.com/sports/mobileregister/rkennedy.ssf?/base/sports/1089537395113510.xml
Difference is in Tide's expectations Sunday, July 11, 2004
Mark Gottfried was a good enough basketball prospect to earn a scholarship to Alabama and help the Tide to the NCAA Sweet 16 in each of his three seasons. He was effective enough as a long-range shooter that his name is still prominently displayed in the Tide record book.
But would the Gottfried of 20 years ago be good enough to earn a scholarship with the current Alabama program that Gottfried the coach has built? Probably not.
For evidence, look at the newest player set to join the Tide program as a walk-on.
Like Gottfried, Jeremy Monceaux is a guard who stands just over 6 feet tall and has a reputation for being a prolific scorer. Monceaux, like Gottfried, is the son of a coach who moved to Alabama and immediately began making an impact as a high school player. Both starred at a private school -- Monceaux at Birmingham's Parkway Christian Academy, Gottfried at UMS-Wright.
Both signed scholarships with Christian-based universities -- Monceaux at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and Gottfried at Oral Roberts University. During his one season in Tulsa, Gottfried averaged 8.1 points per game. Monceaux averaged 8.8 points per game as a freshman in being named to the Big South Conference All-Rookie team.
After playing one season, each player decided he was ready to return to Alabama to compete at the highest level of college basketball. But that's where the difference between Bama basketball of 1984 and Bama basketball of 2004 becomes apparent.
When Gottfried decided to transfer, Wimp Sanderson considered it a victory to sign Gottfried to a scholarship. Monceaux, on the other hand, is in Tuscaloosa these days awaiting his release from Liberty. But even when he's eligible to join the Tide program for the 2005-2006 season, he will almost certainly do so as a non-scholarship player.
The difference between how the two players have been received has little to do with how college basketball has changed in the last two decades. It has everything to do with how Alabama's level of expectation has changed.
Sanderson was one of the most underrated coaches in the history of the Southeastern Conference. He developed good players like Gottfried and Jim Farmer into outstanding contributors, and he took outstanding talents like Buck Johnson and Derrick McKey and made them dominant.
But for all his accomplishments, Sanderson did not take a team to the NCAA Elite 8 and thus did not reap the benefits of being recognized as one of the country's elite programs.
That's where the Tide finds itself today. It's hard to find a scholarship for a player like Monceaux when Alabama is the leading candidate to sign the country's top player -- assuming Athens High School forward Richard Hendrix doesn't go straight to the NBA -- and is still in the running for five of the country's top 50 prospects, according to Rivals.com.
Monceaux may or may not turn out to be as good a player at Alabama as Gottfried. But thanks to what is being built by Gottfried the coach, he will certainly be a part of a better Alabama program.
(Randy Kennedy's column appears Sundays in the Mobile Register. Contact him at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 251-219-5689.)
ROLL TIDE!! Rick
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