Does Nate Oats, Alabama Have an Ideal Starting Five for 2026-27 Season?

The Crimson Tide will soon have 12 players expected to be involved in the rotation.

Alabama head coach Nate Oats argues a call in the second half of the game against Sam Houston on Nov. 3, 2026. | Sarah Munzenmaier/Alabama Crimson Tide on SI

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama basketball had a ton of mixing and matching to do for its starting lineups during the 2025-26 season.

The Crimson Tide seemed to have a new player on the injury report with each upcoming game, and it required head coach Nate Oats and company to make well over a dozen starting lineup combinations throughout the year.

During the 2026-27 preseason in October, Amari Allen was the only player to start in all three exhibitions. Oats had some freshmen start in an exhibition or two, and the same is said for a couple of transfers. Alabama is 1-0 in the regular season after beating Sam Houston on Tuesday night. After four contests, does Oats have an ideal starting lineup in mind?

"Some of that plays itself out," Oats said during Thursday's press conference. "I don't right now because, honestly, even some of our better players right now that are playing good for us are coming off the bench. I don't ever think it's about starting your five best players.

"I think it's about starting a group that can get you off to a great start, with also having great firepower off the bench to come and keep it going. And some of it's just more like who makes the most sense playing with who. Can we get ball-handling in the starting group? Can we have playmaking coming off the bench to then supplement it? Can we get the rotations going?"

Alabama guard Aden Holloway was among the biggest stories in college basketball this offseason, as he was suspended just before the NCAA Tournament following an arrest. That suspension continued into the three exhibitions, the regular-season opener, and it will end following Friday night's home game against Arkansas State.

Holloway, a 2025-26 All-SEC Third Team member, was the Tide’s second-leading scorer with 16.8 points. And when he becomes available this year, he will likely be a permanent starter. He started in 27 of 28 games played last season, after serving as Alabama's sixth-man in 2024-25.

"Holloway's played off the bench for us. He's started for us," Oats said. "At some point we'll settle in on a really good— and maybe we won't ever settle in on a good starting lineup. I mean, there are teams where you rotate the starters through depending on who you're playing and who the other team's starting and all that, so I don't know.

"And we talked about as a staff a little bit. The start to the [Sam Houston] game wasn't bad, we just missed good shots. I thought we were generating good shots for the most part, we just missed them. So we didn't have a great start to the last game, but we had an elite start with the same group of starters to start the second half."

Alabama starting fast in both halves was a major issue last season, especially coming out of the locker room for the second period. It played a role in some of the Tide's losses, including the final one against eventual national champion Michigan in the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16. But those opening minutes out of halftime were perhaps the Tide's best on Tuesday.

"I thought the second-half start — and we've struggled with that here in the past, we just don't come out with the energy for whatever reason — we did not have that problem in Game 1," Oats said. "We came out of the gate in the second half with the same group of starters that started the first half and really punched them in the mouth right out of the gate.

"So I liked the way that group started the second half. So that was pretty good. It was great to see because that's been an issue, particularly with last year's team."

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