CECIL HURT: Future of UA recruit should be interesting

It’s my nature to be cautious about hyperbole. But after watching JaMychal Green of Montgomery’s St. Jude High School play in the AHSAA Tournament on Monday morning, I’ll say this.

Green’s high school career ends on Wednesday night, when St. Jude faces Sulligent in what should be an outstanding Class 1A final. If, at that point, Green were to move to Tuscaloosa in time to practice with the University of Alabama basketball team on Thursday and Friday, he would be in the Crimson Tide starting lineup at Ole Miss on Saturday.

That’s how advanced Green — a 6-foot-8, 240-pound power forward — is at this stage. Admittedly, he is playing in the state’s smallest classification and the scrappy team from Faith Christian of Anniston didn’t have any future SEC stars in the post. But it wasn’t just Green’s power moves in the post, or his half-dozen blocked shots in the first half, or his 80-foot outlet pass (seriously) for an assist. He also plays with an attitude, a controlled aggressiveness that is precisely what Alabama needs.

Green may or may not put up big numbers in the upcoming high school All-American games like the McDonald’s Classic. He’s not a selfish player, and a little selfishness goes a long way in those games. But he is one of those players Auburn coach Jeff Lebo was talking about on Sunday when he discussed how “one player can make such a difference for a basketball team” (he was referring to the Crimson Tide’s Ronald Steele at the time.) He is the kind of player that, under normal circumstances, makes fans excited about a program’s future.

At the moment, circumstances aren’t normal around the Alabama program. The observations about Green are just that — observations — and not an attempt to make a subtle (or not-too-subtle) point that would resound in Mark Gottfried’s favor. The fact is there are a lot of Alabama fans who are concerned about the future, not excited. There are some who are engaged in furious debate about the program. There are some who have moved from the debating stage and progressed all the way to despair, or disgust, or — worst of all — disinterest.

You’d have to be deaf not to hear all the complaining, and disingenuous not to acknowledge it. It’s out there, and it’s going to continue through the rest of the season until Mal Moore sits down and makes some tough decisions, financial and otherwise, about both basketball programs, men’s and women’s (which might not be quite such a tough decision).

This column isn’t going to tackle that debate. A future one probably will. But it wasn’t possible to watch Green on Monday morning without thinking about it, at least as a subtext.

It also spawned another thought, not entirely related, about athletics and the subtle distinction between recruiting a prospect and evaluating a prospect.

In Green’s case, he may have been a tough recruiting battle — any school in America would have signed him — but he was an easy evaluation. Even an amateur like me knew when Green was a 10th-grader that he’d be an elite SEC prospect some day. This state produces one, maybe two of those a year. Over the last five years, I’d say the list includes Green, Richard Hendrix, Ron Steele, D.J. White and Stanley Robinson. Mike Williams might be on there, too, although he has had an injury-and-transfer-plagued career.

If a team had all those guys, and they were all healthy, it would be a great team. But it’s tough to get all those guys, and that’s where evaluation comes in. And a few missed evaluations can be an anchor on a program.

Two years ago, Alabama added a five-player class: Demetrius Jemison, Justin Tubbs, Mikhail Torrance, Avery Jukes and Verice Cloyd. This is not a slam on anyone, or a statement that precludes possible improvement that young players still might make. But there were some missed evaluations in that class. Jukes and Cloyd have already transferred out (and down to the mid-major level, tellingly.) The remaining three are trying hard.

There was a sixth player added to that class in the late spring, a junior college transfer who was originally signed by UAB, then released in the Mike Anderson-to-Mike Davis transition. He was taken mainly as an insurance policy when the debate over Cloyd’s eligibility was raging. It’s interesting to speculate what might have happened had UAB held that player — Mykal Riley — to his scholarship.

Dennis Franchione, to use a persona non grata name, had a very good insight about recruiting. He said, more than once, it wasn’t the recruits you missed that really hurt you. It was the ones you signed that you shouldn’t have that really hurt. It’s true. A missed recruit still leaves you with a scholarship to use. A missed evaluation merely leaves you at a disadvantage.

Anything is possible, but it’s doubtful JaMychal Green will turn out to be a missed evaluation. In that sense, his future was easy to see on Monday morning. In another sense, though, it was still somewhat cloudy.

Cecil Hurt is sports editor of the Tuscalooosa News. Reach him at cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0225.