Tide tries to rebound against Eagles

TUSCALOOSA | Tonight, the University of Alabama men’s basketball team will be looking to rebound — literally.

The Crimson Tide, which lost at home to Belmont 85-83 on Monday, will host Southern Miss tonight at 7 at Coleman Coliseum and one of the many areas Alabama will be looking to address is the number of offensive rebounds that the opposing team is able to control. Belmont had five putback baskets in the second half against Alabama on Monday.

“It wasn’t just one person,” Tide coach Mark Gottfried said after Alabama’s Wednesday practice. “Demetrius Jemison had one rebound and we’ve got to get more out of that position. Richard Hendrix had 10 rebounds, but there were some that he could have gotten. The biggest thing of all was that our guards did not do a very good job of getting a body on their guards and boxing them out. We worked on that, and some of our defensive mistakes, in practice this week.”

Southern Miss will bring a more athletic team into tonight’s game than any Alabama has faced to this point. USM is 2-1 this season, and while it is hard to tell much from the two Golden Eagles wins (victories over Belhaven College and William Carey, with a road loss at California), coach Larry Eustachy’s team is picked in the upper division of Conference USA this season.

The Golden Eagles also have far more size around the basket than any of Alabama’s previous opponents. Seven-foot center Gjio Bain is the team’s leading rebounder (9.7 per game). USM also gets inside help from 6-9, 265-pound Demar Dotson and 6-7, 235-pound Andre Stephens.

“They’ve got all five starters returning,” said Tide forward Alonzo Gee. “They are a big veteran team, so it’s going to be another tough game for us. We have to come prepared to play them. We have some areas that we need to work on. We need to focus on defense and playing together, stuff like that, just get better. We need to use our loss (to Belmont on Monday) to our advantage and learn from our mistakes.”

Sophomore guard Jeremy Wise leads USM in scoring with 15.3 points per game. Right behind him is junior Courtney Beasley, a Huntsville native (14.0 ppg). Craig Craft, a 6-3 guard, averages 10 points per game.

“They are very athletic but the main thing we have to match is their experience,” Gottfried said. “I thought that was the biggest factor in the Belmont game. When the game was on the line, they had experienced guys in the position to make plays and we just can’t match that experience at this point. Southern Miss has all five players back from a team that gave us a very good game (in Mobile) last season, so it will be a difficult situation for us.”

There has been no update on the status of Crimson Tide freshman point guard Rico Pickett. Gottfried announced following the Tide’s Wednesday practice that Pickett had been “suspended indefinitely” from the team, but said that “no conclusion” on Pickett’s status had been reached at that time.

Reach Cecil Hurt at cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0225.