COLUMN: 'Let's Get Out Here And Go To The Final Four'

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Still, Kennesaw State head basketball coach Antoine Pettway was a crucial senior on Alabama’s first and last Elite Eight team. During his college career leading up to that fateful 2003–04 season, he had the best shoe game on the team with those beautiful, gaudy crimson sneakers and us poor to lower-middle class redneck kids in Samantha thought they were the coolest thing we had ever seen.

Rod Grizzard, as I’ve told him several times, was and remains my favorite Alabama basketball player from that or any era, but Pettway had a style that became iconic during his time in Tuscaloosa.

It just so happened to be the time that I was beginning to love the game of basketball, despite not making the cut freshman year for our basketball team. No, I didn’t need some high school coach’s validations and pats on the back to love basketball — I had Rod Grizzard, Antoine Pettway, Chuck Davis, (current) Tuscaloosa Academy basketball head coach Emmett Thomas, Jermareo Davidson, Kennedy Winston and Reggie Rambo — to this day the coolest name in Tide hoops history.

Despite our church league team colors, I begged my parents for those exact shoes worn by Pettway and averaged about 0.1 points a game with them on my feet … but, friends, I felt like I logged a double-double every night. If you look good, you feel like you play good, right?

Fast-forward two decades later: I’ve destroyed much of my physical and mental health after forgoing any kind of basketball ambitions for a career in journalism.

But after an Elite Eight game against Clemson tonight that I would’ve bet a year’s salary we’d never win, I was transformed back into that knobby-kneed 10-year-old in shiny crimson basketball shoes missing a gimme shot in some mostly vacant church gymnasium. That feeling from childhood then found its way to the surface two decades later Saturday night when the clock in Crypto Arena hit 0:00 and

Indeed, the Crimson Tide punched its ticket to the program’s first-ever Final Four — and over a more aggressive Tigers team who thumped Alabama 85-77 a week after Thanksgiving.

Saturday night, though, immediately after the Tide’s 89-82 win over Clemson, I wasn’t sure if I should scream, cry or go out into the quiet street and start firing a pistol into the air to let everyone within earshot know that we had made history.

If you’re a Tide basketball fan, it’s not like you’re sleeping at this hour anyway, so I’m sure you’ll give me a pass for my bluster.

I’m not a sports beat writer and, for the most part, cover Alabama sports at about 35,000 feet.

But I was fortunate enough last year to cover easily one of the most-talented teams in school history that got outmuscled by a physical San Diego State squad in the Sweet Sixteen — despite having an insanely great team with two eventual first-rounders in the NBA Draft.

I even remember telling friends that last year’s team might be the closest we, as a fanbase, ever fly that close to the sun. After all, fellow Gumps, we’re a football school with more national titles than most can count.

I was also excited about the transfer of Grant Nelson from North Dakota State, only to moan and holler at the television when he seemed to underperform. Never mind that the hollering never stopped, but turned positive when Nelson logged a performance for the ages in the Tide’s upset win over No. 1 North Carolina in the Sweet Sixteen.

Off the court, though, but not in the paid seats, is Alabama die-hard and Crimson Tide Sports Network broadcaster Chris Stewart, who will now be the university’s first play-by-play man to call a Tide game that saw the program advance to its first-ever Final Four.

It was goosebumps for this reporter every time the Fairfield native yelled “bottom” on the broadcast Saturday night. Even before the tipoff, it seemed like the planets were aligning.

For instance, the game’s introductions for the starting lineups was a pivotal moment for Stewart and the airwaves echoed with the music and public address system for the better part of 10 minutes.

While I have no way to confirm as of the publication of this piece, I’d bet that Stewart was much like the author of this column as he sat quiet on press row at Crypto Arena anticipating history unfolding before his eyes and mulling over how he would tell the folks back home that this team was unprecedented — something unseen by C.M. Newton, Wimp Sanderson, Mark Gottfried, Bear Bryant, Nick Saban, Chris Stewart and your narrator until tonight.

The excitement of the evening was beautiful, though, even for a Tuscaloosa hillbilly without a press credential listening over the radio from thousands of miles away.

Still, in case you were one of the unfortunate few to miss out on what Stewart said once the lineup introductions wrapped up, he commented:

“I start listening and have to remind myself ‘You’re working, son. Get talking!’

Two hours later, with 35 seconds left in the game and Alabama up by six points, Stewart remarked “We owe you a station ID but we can’t take it yet.”

Stewart is a man of many highlights, who has forgotten more Alabama basketball and other sports history than any three of us put together. But he’s the only appropriate narrator for this moment and I felt it important to document his black-and-white words when the clock hit zero:

“What they said wouldn’t occur is 11.7 (seconds) away from happening”

Then it happened.

“Let’s get out here and go to the Final Four …. Alabama, Alabama, Alabama basketball is headed to the Final Four.”

CTSN broadcaster and former Tide basketball standout Bryan Passink also said repeatedly through the evening that it was the biggest game in Alabama basketball history and commented during the postgame “we won it and we’re headed to the Final Four.”

But perhaps the warmest moment of the night on the radio broadcast came when consensus All-American Tide guard Mark Sears came to the media table immediately after the win and, instead of lauding the team, praised Stewart for the role he has played with the program.

“We wanted to for you to be able to say for the first time Alabama is going to the Final Four,” Sears said. I don’t even remember how Stewart responded because I was trying not to cry.

“Go celebrate with your team,” Stewart answered.

So here’s to all you legends, long-haulers, die-hards, cynics and townies.

I’d say cherish the moment, but there’s no way any of us are forgetting what we witnessed tonight.

Ryan Phillips is an award-winning journalist, editor and opinion columnist. He is also the founder and field editor of Tuscaloosa Patch. The opinions expressed in this column are in no way a reflection of our parent company or sponsors. Email news tips to [email protected].

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