Anthony Grant’s team relied on its defense once again last night in Madison Square Garden.  And once again, its defense came through in the clutch.

Trevor Releford hit a layup to put Alabama up 62-61 with 12.6 seconds to play against Colorado in last night’s NIT semifinal.  The Crimson Tide then held on as CU leading scorer Alec Burks missed a jumper at the buzzer.

The Tide will now face Wichita State in the NIT finals at 7pm ET on Thursday.

“Defense is what gives this team a chance to win,” Grant said after the game.  “That’s what won for us tonight.”  But Bama’s coach also credited his freshman point guard, Releford.

With leading scorer JaMychal Green fouled out, Releford cut through the Buffaloes’ defense for the game-winning bucket.  “Trevor is a playmaker,” his coach said.  “As a freshman, he’s had to grow into that.  But at the end, I wanted to have the ball in his hands.  He read the play, they were cheating to the screen so he was able to rip the baseline and make the shot.”

And the Crimson Tide rolls on.

HBO “Real Sports” is set to air its special report on college athletes and money tonight.  The website SportsByBrooks.com was given a chance to watch an early screening yesterday.  What that site saw will be yet another pain in the rump for SEC fans and administrators:


* Former Auburn players Chaz Ramsey, Troy Reddick, Stanley McClover and Raven Gray speak on the record about a pay-for-play plan on The Plains earlier in the mid-2000s.

* McClover also says someone representing LSU once gave him a $500 handshake at a high school all-star game.  He says there were money handshakes from Auburn and Michigan State supporters, too.  Ohio State boosters reportedly showered him with up to a thousand dollars and girls.

* He claims that he signed with Auburn when a bookbag full of cash was given to him.  “I almost passed out.  I literally almost passed out I couldn’t believe it was true.  I felt like I owed them,” McClover said.

* Reddick says he was “offered a large sum of money” by Auburn alumni.  The player said he didn’t take the money.  He also says he was unhappy on The Plains because AU coaches wanted him to change his major because his class schedule was interfering with football.

* Reddick claims an Auburn coach handed him an envelope containing $500 in order to get him to stay.  “Over that season it happened like two or three more times.  And it happened about six or seven times my senior year.”

* McClover claims that a booster game him $7,000 to buy a car.

* He says he earned $4,000 for a good performance against Alabama in an Iron Bowl game. 

* Ramsey says he received money handshakes during his year on The Plains.

* Gray says he received cash handshakes for “2,500 to 3,000 dollars.”

* Ramsey — who recently had a medical lawsuit against AU thrown out — says he’s coming forward so young players know “what college football is really about, it’s a business.”


For the record, Reddick and McClover were starters at Auburn.  Ramsey and Gray both signed with the Tigers and were on the team.

The school declined to comment on “these alleged claims apparently made by a few former football players.”  Auburn officials also told HBO that “compliance with all NCAA and Southeastern Conference rules is a major emphasis and top priority for all of our athletic programs.”

Someone close to the Auburn athletic department told The Birmingham News: “(The players) lied to somebody, either to Auburn or HBO.  It calls their credibility into question.”  Players are required to sign an NCAA document that affirms they did not break any NCAA rules.  (Uh, yeah… But not many players admit to cheating via NCAA documents.)

Other former Auburn players are now defending their school and attacking the claims of their former teammates.

Lee Ziemba — a star offensive lineman on last year’s BCS championship team — tweeted last night:


Funny HBO story just broke.  Couple former players lying to bring our past season down.  Keep dreaming fellas.


He also sent this message:


Was recruited by the same folks as the HBO star bums, walked out the same locker room doors as them after games…never a dime.


Two-time All-SEC defensive tackle TJ Jackson also discredited the claims.  “I’m not saying this to brag, but I made all-conference my junior and senior year, and I didn’t get paid.  And I wasn’t the only back-to-back, all-conference player and those guys didn’t get paid either.”

Jackson also had a warning for his former teammates: “Some guys don’t know how to let it go when it’s gone.  Don’t be infamous.  By dragging your school into this, you’re not getting famous.  You’re getting infamous.  Guys don’t forget things like this.  Don’t ever burn your bridges.  It’s a dangerous game to play.  You don’t want your business exposed.”


True or false these claims leave Auburn, LSU, Michigan State and Ohio State looking bad.  Ditto Tommy Tuberville — now at Texas Tech — and his former Auburn staff.  And the SEC once again looks dirty, too.

While the fans of the above schools will scream for proof — and these are simply claims — fans across the nation won’t be so patient in rendering a verdict.  Especially not after the Cam Newton fiasco last fall.

Fans of these schools will say that the claims are bunk.  But they have no idea whether they are or not.  Rival fans will take these claims as gospel truth.  But they have no idea whether they are true or not, either.

What we do have are damaging claims.  We’ll see how the media and the institutions involved and the NCAA decide to follow up.  NCAA president Mark Emmert has hopefully already instructed his investigators to sit down and talk with the Tiger Four. 

The Opelika-Auburn News reports that “McClover and Reddick’s alleged interactions lie outside the four-year statute of limitations for NCAA investigations.”  However, because Ramsey and Gray’s accusations fall within the window of investigation, the NCAA could extend its investigation backwards if it finds “the infractions to be systemic.”

At MrSEC.com, we’re going to see in which direction this thing heads before we declare guilt or innocence.

HBO’s “Real Sports” airs tonight at 10pm ET.

Leading scorer JaMychal Green says he’ll be back in Tuscaloosa when the 2011-12 season gets underway.  As a player, not as an observer.  Green says his decision to put off a jump to the NBA is based on deep thought, not emotions.

“Nothing is going to convince me to leave.  I talked to my mom and my dad and we made up our mind that we were coming back and (would) play another year.  I have more things to work on and get my education.”

Anthony Grant told The Montgomery Advertiser he was surprised by Green’s decision.  “He caught me off guard there after the game.  It’s not something that I expected at that time.  But it was a pleasant surprise.”

Indeed.

Green and the Tide face Colorado tonight at 9pm ET in the NIT semifinals.

The big storyline at Auburn this spring is the incredible amount of turnover on the Tigers’ roster.  Gone are offensive and defensive leaders Cam Newton and Nick Fairley.  Gone are literally dozens of members of last year’s BCS championship squad.  And receivers coach Trooper Taylor wants the team to know it.

“All the good players are gone” is Taylor’s battle cry.  “Anything I can do to motivate those guys.  I didn’t say it; I read it,” Taylor said of the “everyboy’s gone” mantra.   “I want to see if they’re doing to react to that.  If you sit back and take something, you tolerate or accept it, you encourage it.”

“What I want them to understand is that that’s everyone else’s perception.  I talk to them about it every day.  I want them to realize that.  I actually posted the article for them to read.  I don’t write it, (I) just read it.”

And he’s making sure Auburn’s players are reading it, too.

Backup New York Jets quarterback and former Tennessee Volunteer Erik Ainge has opened up to ESPN New York about his battle with prescription pain killers and other hard drugs.  According to the quarterback — whose senior year in Knoxville came in 2007 — he was using while at UT.

Some excerpts from Ainge’s first-person account:


I’m a drug addict.  I was in denial for a long time, but that’s who I am.  My addiction is with the hardest of hard drugs — heroin, cocaine and alcohol.  During my days of using, I was a really bad drug addict.  I would’ve made Charlie Sheen look like Miss Daisy.


And…


It got worse in high school and even worse in college.  By the time I was a senior in college, I was an addict.  I played my whole senior season with a broken finger on my throwing hand.  It was really badly broken.  Just taking the snap, throwing the ball, handing if off, getting tackled — everything that goes along with playing quarterback — it was very painful.

Throughout that process, I became hooked on pain killers.  I got them from the team doctor.  I went through the prescriptions pretty fast.  After he had been giving them to me for quite a while, he said he couldn’t give them to me anymore.

I was hooked on them and I was playing football, and there was no way I was going to cancel my senior year by going to rehab.  I started getting them from people, buying them, getting them off the street.  I wasn’t the only player on the team that was doing it, so we knew people.  It wasn’t, like, super sketchy or anything.  We knew people who had them, and we were Tennessee football players, so they pretty much just gave them to us.


ESPN contacted UT but a spokesperson denied comment.

Ainge says that he is coming forward to help others who are battling addiction.  We at MrSEC.com wish him well in his recovery.  But the fallout from this bombshell could get interesting.

First, did then head coach Phillip Fulmer know of his star quarterback’s addiction?  Did members of the Tennessee staff — like then-offensive coordinator and current Duke head coach David Cutcliffe — turn blind eyes to Ainge’s issues?

Fulmer is considered to be a candidate for the UT athletic director position should current AD Mike Hamilton be dismissed at some point.  If details of a drug scandal under his watch pop up, that could hurt his chances for landing that spot, if he wants it.

Finally, from Lane Kiffin to Bruce Pearl to the NCAA to pain killers… how many more bad stories can Tennessee fans stomach at this point?

For the record, Ainge had a solid senior season at Tennessee throwing  for 3,522 yards, 31 touchdowns (versus just 10 interceptions) and he was sacked just 3 times.

Last week, in the span of four days, Darrin Horn lost three players — and possibly a fourth — from next year’s roster:


* Ramon Galloway and Stephen Spinella announced they were transferring.

* Murphy Holloway announced his plans to transfer back to Ole Miss having never donned a Gamecock jersey.

* And starting point guard Bruce Ellington announced plans to join Steve Spurrier’s football team this fall.  For now he says he plans to return to basketball for the SEC portion of the schedule.


Brad Senkiw of The Anderson Independent takes Carolina’s fourth-year coach to task for the turmoil in Columbia:


… It would be a miracle for the Gamecocks to undergo serious improvement between now and the end of next season.  Only two new players are scheduled to come in, and with scholarships open, Horn will have to field players other teams probably didn’t want for obvious talent reasons.

Horn’s also done himself no favors endearing himself to the fans or media.

Through it all, Horn continues to say he’s “building a program.”  The problem is, it’s all crumbling around him.

At this point, it’s unlikely he’ll be given a chance to ever accomplish that goal.


But according to GamecockCentral.com — the Rivals site covering South Carolina — firing Horn would be awfully expensive.  With four years left on his contract, numerous bonuses and other clauses factored in, Carolina could be on the hook for as much as $3.7 million if it dismissed Horn.

In other words, the Cocks will likely be giving Horn a while longer to “build” his program.

The jury is still out on young Memphis basketball coach Josh Pastner.  And that means the new head coaches at Arkansas and Tennessee will be working hard to build recruiting inroads into the Bluff City.

Mike Anderson — who came to Arkansas from Missouri — and Cuonzo Martin — who came to Tennessee from Missouri State — are sure to cross swords over Memphis prospects very soon.  For the Vols, they’ve long tried to put down ties in West Tennessee, but to no avail.  In the end, it’s still 391 miles from the Mississippi River to the Smokies.

It’s 318 miles from Beale Street to Fayetteville.  For the Hogs, Anderson might already be targeting Memphis.  A site covering University of Memphis sports reports that the Tigers will soon announce a home game with the Razorbacks… though no date has been announced and UA has not confirmed the matchup yet.

Tennessee will also be playing the Tigers at FedExForum next year. 

“Memphis is a great town and we’ve had some tremendous success,” Anderson said when asked about the Memphis area.  “You look at Todd Day, Corey Beck, those guys are pretty good players for us (in the 1990s).  There’s a good bloodline there and we’ll keep tapping into that.”

Day — who is now a prep coach in Memphis — says Anderson has been “a master” at recruiting West Tennessee in the past.  “He’s been doing it for a long time.”

The battle for Memphis is about to begin and the SEC’s two newest generals will be the guys matching wits.

1.  Get your Alabama practice notes right here.

2.  Linebacker Dont’a Hightower is finally back to 100%.

3.  Here’s an interesting story of how former Auburn star Charles Barkley might have helped bring Anthony Grant to Alabama.

4.  Emory Blake is ready to lead AU’s receiving corps.

5.  The Tigers will lean on experienced backs Mike Dyer and Onterio McCalebb this fall.

6.  Mike Anderson is already creating basketball excitement among Arkansas ticket-buyers.

7.  AD Jeff Long and Anderson feel that UA is “behind in the SEC” when it comes to facilities.

8.  There was plenty of enthusiasm as Ole Miss opened spring practice yesterday.  (Enthusiams.  Enthusiasms.  Enthusiasms.)

9.  Practice notes from Day One here.

10.  Houston Nutt says, “We’re excited.”

11.  For the Rebels, it’s time to get tough.

University of Kentucky officials would like a grand, new basketball arena to replace 35-year-old Rupp Arena.  The mayor of Lexington has said the city would prefer to make upgrades to Rupp, not start from scratch.  Now that mayor has put together a task force to look into the future of UK’s legendary arena.

Jim Gray’s task force will be financed with $350,000 in private donations.  The money will be used to hire “the best of the best” consultants.”

“We know that this arena needs to be the best, state of the art,” Gray told The Lexington Herald-Leader.  Ah, but “state of the art” means adding luxury suites and it might take an all new arena to add those luxuries.

Stay tuned…

Longtime Kevin Stallings assistant King Rice will be the next head coach at Monmouth University.  The former North Carolina point guard is expected to be named the school’s coach today.

Rice has been at Vanderbilt for the past five seasons.  Monmouth has reached the NCAA Tournament three times in the last 14 years.