Nate Oats Hints at More Roster Moves for Alabama

Alabama men's basketball signed four transfer portal players earlier in the week, rounding out the Tide's seven new additions via the portal and the recruiting trail.

As of Wednesday morning, Alabama has 11 players on the roster for the 2025-26 men's basketball season. A lot of production from last season will be replaced with Alabama losing Mark Sears, Clifford Omoruyi, Grant Nelson, and Chris Youngblood.

Freshman point guard Labaron Philon also declared for the NBA draft, but Philon did not scrimmage at the NBA combine and has until May 28 to withdraw his name from the draft if he wants to return to Alabama next season.

On Wednesday, Alabama head coach Nate Oats spoke at the Regions Golf Tournament in Birmingham, where he hinted that Alabama might not be done adding to this year's roster.

"The roster's been the top priority. We've got 11 guys on the roster right now on scholarship. Probably going to fill at least one more. You know, see what happens. There's still some decent guys out there," Oats said.

However, Alabama won't add a player just to get another scholarship body on the roster; Oats is okay if Alabama rolls with the 11 guys currently on the roster.

"If we went into the season with just those 11, I think we'd be fine, but as you saw last year, some injuries happen, you need some stuff. So we're still looking. We're looking at a couple of guys. We'll see who's pulling their name out of the draft. It's still in the portal. There's options out there like that."

"But the 11 guys we've got, I mean, it's kind of set moving forward. It probably looks like, ideally, a third, a third, a third. Meaning, if you end up with 12 or 13 guys on the roster, you know, a third of them are guys that are returning, a third of them freshmen, and maybe a third of them guys in the portal. So we've got it similar to that now."

Could Labaron Philon be one of the players Oats is referencing, pulling his name out of the portal?

Wyatt Fulton is the Tide 100.9 DME and Brand Manager, primarily covering Alabama Crimson Tide football and men's basketball. For more Crimson Tide coverage, follow Wyatt on X (Formerly known as Twitter) at @FultonW_.