Throwback Thursday: 1960-61 Alabama Basketball
If you think Alabama hiring a basketball coach who was not far removed from the high school game was something new with Nate Oats, it wasn't.
During the 1960-61 season, the Crimson Tide turned to Hayden Riley, a former Crimson Tide player who had returned to Tuscaloosa in 1958 to be an assistant coach and scout under the direction of Eugene Lambert.
Riley had previously spent 10 years coaching at Coffee High School in Florence. He had compiled a 225-68 record and saw his teams make the state tournament seven times, winning the title in 1951.
It would be tough going during his first season leading the the Crimson Tide, as Alabama opened by winning just one of its first eight games, including its first two Southern Conference tilts.
Overall, it finished 7-18, for the program's first back-to-back sub.-500 seasons since 1925-26, and 1926-27, when the Crimson Tide still competed in the Southern Conference.
Forward Larry Pennington led Alabama in scoring by averaging 17.2 points and also grabbed 7.4 rebounds. Forward Henry Hopkins was the only other player to average double-digit points with 16.6, to go with 9.3 rebounds. Junior guard Darrell Estes, who was listed as 5 foot 8, had 9.0 points and 3.4 rebounds.
No one knew it at the time, of course, but Riley ended up laying a foundation for the program that lasted decades. On his initial staff, overseeing the freshman team was one of his former players at Coffee, who during his first coaching job posted a 25-4 record at Carbon Hill and won the Walker Country championship.
Winfrey Sanderson, better known as "Wimp," was 23 when he joined the Crimson Tide coaching ranks, technically as a graduate assistant. He served 20 years in that capacity before taking over as head coach in 1980-81, and going 267-119 through the 1991-92 season.
Riley also ended up hiring the coach who would eventually replace him for the 1968-69 season, and stay until Sanderson took over, C.M. Newton.
