re: Alabama Basketball 2026-27 roster tracker

Well they were justified last season because many of those guys from the transfer portal were busts.

Bethea, TBB, Bristow, Noah

They spent a good deal of money on those 4 and we got absolutely nothing in return. Irony is if we spent all the money on one big time player we probably get a better outcome

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Panthers4life

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Seriously.

A guard would just be a luxury. Allen and Biz will likely be our 2 PGs. We have a bunch of talented 2s and 3s, we have 4s, and we have a 5 and a hybrid 4/5.

I would really like one more true 5, if we could, but this team has talent to compete.

If Allen goes pro, then I will start panicking, because he is the most important player we are recruiting at this point.

You’re right last year was a complete failure of a season. We made it to the sweet 16 for the 4th year in a row I’ll defer to oats for roster management over anyone else.

ETA if we dropped our load on one player and he goes out for the year before the tournament the crying from everyone would be epic. Sounds like a stupid strategy to build a team around.

We need that 5th year to be approved and for all the outgoing Seniors to be grandfathered in. Would at least give us a lot more options at Guard

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You’re right last year was a complete failure of a season. We made it to the sweet 16 for the 4th year in a row I’ll defer to oats for roster management over anyone else.

ETA if we dropped our load on one player and he goes out for the year before the tournament the crying from everyone would be epic. Sounds like a stupid strategy to build a team around.

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The idea of buying as many front court bodies as possible and Bethea as insurance (because we had two guards coming off injuries from the prior season) made a lot of sense if you expected Sherrell to take a big jump with the starting backcourt probably scoring 40 a night.

At least with TBB and Bristow, they were injured. Williamson was just a colossal miss that we could ill afford and why we tried to bring a two-way contract player in to bolster the front court midseason.

I truly think that if we could have stuck with Bediako off the bench and our 2nd leading scorer didn't get caught smokin da weeduh then we'd probably played ourselves up to the 3 line and gotten to a regional final with a puncher's chance. Sucks but really sucks more that we couldn't just getting that competent bench forward from the guy we targeted out of the portal.

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I truly think that if we could have stuck with Bediako off the bench and our 2nd leading scorer didn't get caught smokin da weeduh then we'd probably played ourselves up to the 3 line and gotten to a regional final with a puncher's chance. 

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Neither of these things prevented Bama getting a 3 seed, tho. Shitting the bed against UGA and Ole Miss was the issue.

Oats has been able to generally get production out of his backcourt and Hannah leaving actually makes me feel even better about the incoming freshmen + Cloer.

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Then when we finished up the portal class everyone raved about it.

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Not everyone. Some of us said our front court would limit our ceiling and there were posters indicating Williamson’s defensive metrics were very concerning. Philon, Trelly and Mallette’s shooting and defense in the TT game, and others drug us over the line to the S16…but the season played out exactly as indicated after looking at the roster prior to the season. Our frontcourt wasn’t good enough against the top teams.

They played one of their worst halves in the postseason in the first half and still were only down 2. They pretty much handled us the entire 2nd half. We had a 2 point lead with 12 minutes to go against UConn in 2024, which was better than what we had in Chicago. I was at both games, and even with the lead at half I only gave us a 20% chance of winning. Everyone in the stands could tell Mich wasn’t playing well other than making wide open, warmup style 3s. As soon as we cooled off from 3 (which some of us called due to 2nd half tired legs), it was over. We weren’t winning that game. We didn’t have the front court.

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BamaBravesPackers

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You are absolutely goddamn insufferable.

The staff obviously has much better insight on Amari Allen’s decision, and also I would like to believe that Holloway will reach a plea agreement that reduces the felony charges due to being a first time offender and the marijuana no longer possessing the same stigma that it did just 4-5 years ago. I would like to believe CNO has a general idea of how both of these situations are likely to play out (a deal with Allen may already be reached for all we know).

IF those two break our way, then you are looking at:
- Holloway
- Allen
- Jemison
That’s 3 returning starters, and two primary ball-handlers. Throw in Bristow and hopefully the kid from Boise State along with the size already signed, and that’s a MUCH stronger roster on paper compared to this time a year ago when Philon and Holloway/Wrightsell (off the bench) were the only known commodities.

I also think the amount of talent in this 2026 class is being highly overshadowed/underestimated due to the portal. CNO’s best team was led by 3 TF and a couple of (very) low rated transfers. I doubt seriously that many in this thread would have believed a year ago that this offseason was told hinge on Amari Allen’s decision to return for a 2nd season.

I believe this Freshman class will turn out to be one of CNO’s best ever. Richardson and Samuels will both possess elite scoring ability and will make a larger contribution than Allen and Bristow did this past season as a duo.

I believe Oats is confident and knows the talent he has on this roster already. That explains the emphasis on bigs at the 4 and depth at the 5.

The Final 4 team was widely regarded as a rebuilding season, and if we would have all known ahead of time how poor this past year’s transfer class was then most fans would have pegged us as a middle of the pack team in the SEC and an 8/9 seed caliber team, and that’s exactly what we would have been if not for an unheralded TF in Amari Allen and the dramatic improvement that Sherrill and Philon both underwent.