Jumbo Package: Kalen DeBoer is adjusting just fine to SEC life

Happy Friday, everyone. The women’s basketball team fell at Auburn last night, extending a rough start to SEC play that doesn’t portend well for the rest of the season. Their two wins came over doormats Georgia and Mizzou, and they lost badly to 3-3 Arkansas and now 2-4 Auburn. They will next host Kentucky on Sunday. Meanwhile, the men will follow up their win over Auburn by hosting LSU tomorrow. Auburn Twitter was all up in their feels yesterday.

I think they’re really just mad that they lost, y’all.

The Gym Tide remain unbeaten headed into their meet tonight at Florida.

Alabama gymnastics will look to continue its undefeated 2024 season when it travels to take on the Florida Gators this week.

The No. 6 Crimson Tide (4-0-1) is coming off a season-high score of 197.525 in a tie with Arkansas, highlighted by a clutch 9.95 floor routine score by Lilly Hudson in the night’s final performance to tie it up. Friday’s meet in Gainesville will be Alabama’s first true road meet this season, as they opened the year in Las Vegas and have been at home for both meets since then.

You can catch the ladies on ESPN2 at 6pm CT, if you so desire.

Kalen DeBoer continues to say all the right things, and it’s been a hell of a week for him, with Ryan Williams and Noah Carter pledging to the Tide. .

The tone in Tuscaloosa is certainly different now, and all the noise about the doomed nature of a Tide program under new leadership looks premature.

“I’ve had success a lot of places and I feel that can carry over,” DeBoer told McAfee.

“A lot of times it’s just about simply building around people, the relationships and the Xs and Os, and things like that — football is football. I’m getting to know this part of the country very quickly. Not completely familiar with it, but got some people around me that certainly are. We’re hitting the ground running. I’m excited about building those relationships and making this next season — not waiting around. Not rebuilding, but reloading.”

Proof of the pudding is in the eating, so we will see how things look after next season, but it’s hard to imagine the transition going much better than it has. Nick Saban’s retirement is a seismic event to say the least.

Michael Casagrande is carrying some water for us today.

Coleman Coliseum’s got to go.

It’s time for it to enjoy the retirement life on the Florida coast or become a useful parking lot.

There’s really little defense for prolonging the lifespan of this cavernous concrete glimpse into what someone thought was a good idea in the 1960s.

So, everyone agrees on something, a feat of its own in 2024. Time for something new.

Surely that lights fiasco was the last straw. Make it happen, Greg.

Tommy Tuberville came out with a weird flex.

Now, Tuberville is a senator in Alabama, and after the success that he had against the Crimson Tide, there was some concern that he wouldn’t be able to get Alabama fans to vote for him. However, Tuberville, the former Ole Miss and Auburn coach actually gives himself credit for bringing Saban to the Crimson Tide. He once beat Alabama six times in a row, and he got a lot of their coaches fired, and Saban was brought in to fix it all. That’s the pitch that he gives to voters.

“I told them, ‘First of all, you wouldn’t have Nick Saban, because I got the rest of them fired,’” Tuberville continued. “When Nick came in, he changed the, I guess, the atmosphere in what Alabama had their possibilities of doing. He was the best guy for the job.”

Last, the good folks at AL dot com took a stab at an All-Saban team for you.

It’s worth noting that there was a good bit of fluidity as to which position a given player played during his career (particularly on the offensive line), but we tried to stick with one position for each player. The exception is special teams, where a couple of players who excelled on offense or defense also showed up in the kicking game accolades.

With those caveats out of the way, here’s AL.com’s picks for the All-Saban team (years played for Saban at Alabama — excluding redshirt seasons — in parentheses):

That ought to provide something to fight over.

That’s about it for today. Have a great weekend.

Roll Tide.