All right, hey, friend of the show back again, really appreciate you.

Conrad Van Order, host and producer three-man front W-J-O-X radio down in Birmingham.

Conrad, how are you?

Doing great, Michael.

Appreciate you having me back.

Yeah, and, you know, I can't make fun of you as much as I did last year because I think

the last time we talked, Tennessee had just, they had beaten Alabama, so we don't even

have to mention that series last year because it was such a disaster for especially Joey Aguilar.

Wait, wait, let me ask you that. Was Alabama fans, were they, were they sad to see Joey Aguilar not get his, his eighth year because of that pick six?

See, that's actually a funny point that you made there because, yeah, I think Alabama fans were actually a little disappointed about that.

It's like, man, I'll take another Zabian Brown pick six before halftime this year upcoming.

But no, it's going to be, I know we're not going to talk a lot about Tennessee, but I'm very interested to see where that goes this year.

All right.

Well, I mean, again, we don't do a ton of basketball on this show, but this is kind of peak basketball time. I know it is for you guys as well. So how would you rate the job Nate Oates has done this year? Because I've talked to some people who, you know, they've kind of told me this was his worst team, they thought. yet I know they're not going to win the SEC because Florida is so good, but they may be the second best team in the conference. I mean, that's a pretty outstanding head coach, Alabama has. Yeah, I mean, if you were to ask me to put a letter grade on it, I mean, I'd probably go, I mean, I'd probably have to give them an A-A-a-minus, maybe, something like that, because I agree with what you said. On paper, coming into the year, you know, you knew about Phylon coming back, and that was a big gift for Alabama, but you had a lot of unknowns, honestly, and it's just, it's been kind of a weird season because you started off pretty hot you got that win over st. Johns and Illinois, and it's like, man, this team's looking like

something special.

Then they kind of had that rut in the middle of the season.

But now I know they just lost on the road to Georgia.

But up until that point, right, you went eight games in a row.

I think it's really impressive what he's done.

And I think, you know, for me personally, but also just talking to a lot of Alabama

fans, you know, two months ago, a month and a half ago, right, it was, make to the sweet 16, that's kind of the standard now. That'll be a good year. And now, I mean, I talked somebody the other day, and they said, well, I think Alabama might win the whole thing. I don't, I don't think I would go that far but yeah they're, they're playing great basketball. They're no Florida. Not many teams are right now. But no, they're doing a great job. And I think you have to give a lot of credit to Nate for finding a way to get these guys to come together. And, you know, despite the whole Bettyaco thing, which I honestly was not a huge fan of in general of bringing him back. but to kind of have him come back, you can't tell me that wasn't a distraction for some of the guys, especially like an Aden Shirel of, oh, so I'm not good enough. So we got to go bring this guy in. And to be able to navigate that the way that he did and to get this team playing their best ball right now is pretty impressive. You went right into my next question. I wanted to ask you about old Bettyaco. I mean, where is the general Alabama fan? Do they support that? Because, you know, for the rest of us, I mean, that was like, that was almost like borderline disgraceful. Especially, I mean, it's one thing where like the coach comes out. Didn, didn't he say, like, a month prior? Like, I'm not in favor of these pros coming in, and then he just did it himself. So he's not doing anything that the rest of these coaches necessarily aren't doing. I mean, I think they'd all bend the rules to, if it's to their advantage. But just, I mean, this was almost like a line too far, even for Commissioner Sanky, apparently.

Oh, that's a whole other thing there because, yeah, it's pretty funny that kind of just went against Alabama on that one, didn't you?

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