Expectations have never been higher for Alabama basketball as it gets set to embark on what could be a special season in 2024-25. Nate Oats has raised the bar in Tuscaloosa, leading the Crimson Tide to a pair of SEC regular season and tournament titles, three trips to the Sweet 16, and the program’s first-ever trip to the Final Four a year ago.
Basketball can be a funny sport, particularly with a single elimination tournament that brings the most drama out of any postseason in any sport but doesn’t always lead to the best teams playing for the championship.
A case in point is Alabama’s 2022-23 team might have been the best in school history. That team finished the SEC Tournament as the No. 1 team in the country, earning a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time. A cold shooting night in the Sweet 16 sent them home.
Last year’s team limped to the finish line and had plenty of warts, particularly defensively, and yet entered the tournament as a 4-seed and proceeded to make an unexpected run to the Final Four.
So just because Alabama has one of the best rosters in college basketball, that doesn’t guarantee the Tide is going to win a national championship or even make it to the Final Four, though coming up short of a second straight Final Four would probably constitute a disappointment for most Alabama fans.
We’re just a little over 48 hours away from Alabama opening the regular season at home against UNC Asheville. It’s a good time to examine what the best and worst-case scenarios look like for this team.
Best case scenario for Alabama Basketball
There’s no point in dancing around it. The best case scenario for this team is not only making the Final Four but winning the whole thing. This is one of the most talented teams in college basketball and the goal of this team should 100% be cutting down the nets and taking home the program’s first national championship.
For Alabama to get there, though, they’ll need Mark Sears to play like the preseason National Player of the Year. They’ll need USF transfer Chris Youngblood to get healthy and for him, Sears, and Wrightsell to all shoot close to 40% from three. They’ll need Aden Holloway to get close to that number, too, and be capable of spelling Sears and keeping him from wearing out too early in the season due to heavy minutes.
They’ll need Cliff Omoruyi to shore up the defense and be a defensive player of the year candidate. But they’ll also need the guards, including Sears, to defend better than they did a year ago.
Best case scenario also includes Derrion Reid and Labaron Philon both looking like one-and-done’s. It means nobody on the team is frustrated with their role; they’re just content to play whatever role is available to help the team toward the ultimate goal.
If everything comes together, and Alabama can avoid an off shooting night in March that could derail the season, then this team has the firepower to win it all.
Worst case scenario
The worst case is that maybe Chris Youngblood’s injury lingers and he’s never able to contribute at the level he was expected to. Maybe Aden Holloway loses his confidence again like he did at Auburn and becomes unplayable leaving Alabama thinner at guard than anyone expected. Maybe Labaron Philon’s three-point shooting in the exhibitions was a mirage and he’ll struggle to shoot like most expected him to.
Maybe Wrightsell and Grant Nelson struggle to stay healthy, and maybe freshman Aiden Sherrell isn’t as ready to contribute as the coaching staff thinks and Alabama ends up being thin in the frontcourt.
Even with all those things working against them, Alabama is too talented to miss the NCAA Tournament. They’re probably too talented to be any worse than a four or five-seed.
That means the worst case scenario is probably a first weekend exit. With all the hype surrounding this team, losing in the first or second round would undoubtedly be a massive disappointment, regardless of the circumstances around it.
