Column: Take a Bow, Preston Murphy

The Alabama assistant basketball coach has been monumental in helping put together an excellent roster for the 2024-25 season.

Dec 16, 2023; Omaha, Nebraska, USA; Alabama Crimson Tide assistant coach Preston Murphy watches / Steven Branscombe-USA TODAY Sports

Preston Murphy wrote a cartoonishly large check over the course of last week, and on Sunday, he cashed it in full.

Starting last Monday, as transfer portal center Clifford Omoruyi began his official visit to Alabama, Murphy sent out a tweet of Clifford the Big Red Dog in an Alabama hat, hinting at Alabama landing the highly-coveted piece of its 2024-25 roster.

pic.twitter.com/ZGc8sOLR8w

— Preston Murphy (@coach_pmurph) April 29, 2024

Over the coming days, Murphy continued to play games on the app now known as X, totaling four posts that ranged from subtly to obviously towards Omoruyi committing to Alabama. A bold move, considering after his Alabama visit, Omoruyi still had a visit to Chapel Hill on deck to check out North Carolina.

But that didn't deter Murphy, as he kept at his game until Omoruyi's commitment to Alabama on Sunday morning, to which Murphy appropriately responded with a mic drop:

pic.twitter.com/UC1SFEqFU8

— Preston Murphy (@coach_pmurph) May 5, 2024

Omoruyi was the biggest, and latest in a long line of commits Murphy has locked down for Nate Oats in the recent months. Since the season ended, Alabama has landed five commitments: Omoruyi, Auburn guard Aden Holloway, South Florida guard Chris Youngblood, Pepperdine guard Houston Mallette, and 4-star high school recruit Labaron Philon.

Murphy hosted all five of those players on visits this spring, the only five players that Alabama has hosted on a visit in the offseason. In other words, Murphy is batting 1.000.

Murphy was also the lead recruiter on the three signees out of high school that Alabama landed before the turn of the new year: 5-star Derrion Reid, 5-star Aiden Sherrell, and 4-star Naas Cunningham. Alabama's 2024 recruiting class currently sits at No. 2 in the country, the highest-ranked class in school history.

"Preston [Murphy] is a big-time recruiter," Oats said in Phoenix back in April. "He's certainly using this Final Four run to our advantage, for sure. We'll see what type of dividends we can gain from it moving forward this spring and summer.”

You're seeing those dividends in real time. Four impact commits from the transfer portal and a recruiting class that on paper rivals Brandon Miller and Collin Sexton's classes. But perhaps the most impressive part of what Murphy is doing is what he had to replace.

Murphy's role is filling what Bryan Hodgson left. Hodgson was Oats' lead recruiter at Alabama for the first four years of his tenure, and came over with him from Buffalo. Hodgson laid the groundwork for recruiting at Alabama, landing many of the best players of the Oats era: Brandon Miller, Jaden Bradley, Charles Bediako, Rylan Griffen, and Josh Primo to name a few.

So when Hodgson took the head coaching job at Arkansas State last spring, there were worries that Alabama's recruiting wouldn't be as elite as it was. That worry has been dispelled, as now there's no doubt Alabama is going to be competing for the top recruits and transfers year in and year out.

Over the past few months Murphy has cemented himself as one, if not the best recruiter in the entire country. When you combine his recruiting abilities with Oats' system with NBA appeal, plus the positive momentum of a program coming off its first-ever Final Four, and Alabama fans can rest easy knowing some of the top talent in the country will be eyeing Tuscaloosa for years to come.

All signs point to Alabama wanting to keep Murphy around as well, evidenced by his extension and raise given back in March. He's one of the most important people in the Alabama basketball program, a program that shows signs of slowing down on the recruiting front.

In the meantime, make sure you turn post notifications on for @coach_pmurph on Twitter.