Over the long haul, University of Alabama basketball coach Avery Johnson’s goals will include breaking a number of long and unpleasant streaks, from the Crimson Tide’s long NCAA Tournament drought to a stretch of SEC Tournament irrelevance.
On Thursday, he gets a chance to turn around a six-year downturn of that nature as Alabama opens play against No. 23-ranked Xavier in the Advocare Invitational, a premiere early-season event in Orlando. The Crimson Tide hasn’t beaten a ranked team on a neutral floor in six years, the last win coming over a 15th-ranked Michigan in the Old Spice Classic (an earlier version of the Advocare in Orlando) in November of 2009.