Alabama basketball ranked No. 1 in Jon Rothstein's pre-season poll

For probably the first time in Alabama Crimson Tide history, the basketball team will go into a season with a better chance of winning the national title than the football team. Nate Oats’ squad is coming off of their first-ever Final Four appearance and returns the best roster in college basketball by a wide margin.

After testing the NBA draft waters, Mark Sears, Grant Nelson and Jarin Stevenson all decided to return to Tuscaloosa for another year. The Tide also added five really solid players in the transfer portal G Houston Mallette (Pepperdine), G Chris Youngblood (USF), G Aden Holloway (Auburn) and C Clifford Omoruyi (Rutgers).

Alabama is widely projected as the No. 1 team in the country, and with a brutal out-of-conference schedule that includes Memphis, Purdue, Illinois, Houston and North Carolina, it won’t take long to find out how good they are.

College Basketball expert for CBS Sports and FanDuel, Jon Rothstein, also ranks the Crimson Tide as the No. 1 team heading into the 2024 season. Rothstein rounds out his top five with all Big 12 members in Kansas, Houston, Baylor and Iowa State.

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