JaMychal Green heard the whispers. He knew his coach, Mark Gottfried, was on the hot seat.

He tried to ignore them, even as they grew louder during the first half of the season.

“Of course, we heard it from everywhere,” said the freshman from Montgomery, who Monday was named SEC Freshman of the Week for the second time this season. “It was on the Internet, the radio shows — it was everywhere. We heard it, but we didn’t know it would come this soon.”

Green already knew college basketball was a tough sport. Monday, he saw it’s also a tough business. The freshman used an odd term to describe the development.

“I was actually shocked that he got laid off in the middle of the season,” Green said.

Uh, JaMychal, “laid off” happens at the GM plant and UPS after Christmas. Gottfried was fired. Well, actually, Mal Moore allowed him to resign.

“I was just shocked,” Green said. “It hit me hard, but I’m just going to continue to be here and play hard, try to make a run for this team.”

That’s not blind freshman optimism talking. Alabama is 2-3 in the SEC, but that’s hardly out of the SEC West race.

Philip Pearson has been in Mark Gottfried’s shadow for the past 14 years. But Green knows him well.

“I had a good relationship with Coach Pearson,” he said. “He’s from Montgomery and played at Jeff Davis. We’ve talked a lot since he started recruiting me in eighth grade. I knew him a while before I came here.

“I think he’ll do a good job. Today in practice, he kept pushing us and we kept going. He knows what he’s talking about and knows what he’s doing.”

That doesn’t mean change is coming quickly. Green was asked if Monday’s practice was awkward.

“Yeah, it was,” he said. “We just had to put some things together and go like that.”

One obvious message was Pearson’s push for team play.

“He wants the ball inside and outside,” Green said. “He just wants us to share the ball and become a team.”

For Pearson, Monday was surreal. The guy he worked for was fired. He’s the new boss, on an interim basis.

“Well, it’s tough,” the coach said after practice. “You always want to have the chance to be the head coach, but you never know when it’s going to happen, and this is probably a little more challenging situation than most.”

But he, like Gottfried, loves Alabama basketball.

“As most of you know, this basketball program, the Alabama program, is something that’s very special to me,” he said. “Sixteen of the last 20 years I’ve spent right here in Tuscaloosa with ’Alabama’ right across my chest.”

Pearson was asked what he told his players in the locker room.

“I was somewhat of a player at Alabama, not a very good one,” the coach said. “But I was here for five years, and everything I did, I did full speed when I was a player. And I’ve done that in coaching, too.

“Driven all night, worked all day, and looked at tape all night. Everything there is to do as a coach, I do it full speed. Made a promise to these guys that that’s what I’ll do as a head coach, and I can assure you our staff will do that. And in return, I’ve asked that our guys give it 110 percent every step of the way and I think they will.”

He also appreciated Gottfried’s reaction.

“He was very supportive. It was honestly a tough situation for he and his family,” Pearson said. “But he just said, ‘Hey, work as hard as you can. You guys play as well as you can,’ and kind of left it at that.”

Ken Rogers covers Alabama sports for The Dothan Eagle.