Alabama Basketball: Nate Oats signs another top 15 recruiting class

In the ever fluid world of modern college basketball roster building, Nate Oats has built a juggernaut on the recruiting trail. Yesterday was the beginning of the early signing period for the sport, and four commits officially put pen to paper.

The names:

F - Mouhamed Dioubate, 6’7”

F - Sam Walters, 6’8”

G - Davin Cosby, 6’6”

G - R.J. Johnson, 6’3”

Nick Alvarez over at Al.com has a nice synopsis for you, including a bio on each player.

The Crimson Tide’s class is ranked 13th nationally in the 247Sports Composite and third in the SEC, behind Kentucky and Tennessee. Its signees spread evenly between the front and backcourts. Teams aren’t allowed to comment on verbal pledges. But once high schoolers faxed over their paperwork, the Tide’s social media accounts welcomed the group.

Cosby and Walters are both heralded marksmen from three point range, which is something that we know is coveted in Oats’ offense.

It’s no surprise to see three players who have the length to play big at the wing or even get by as a stretch four. As we saw in the opener against Longwood, Nate has an affinity for players with the length to defend the perimeter and create havoc on defense to get the transition game going on offense. He had it with Herb Jones and John Petty back on the 26-win squad that won both the SEC regular season and tournament titles back in 2020-21, but last year simply did not. The result was a mediocre defensive team that put too much pressure on the very capable offense to score a ton every night.

We’re only one game in, but players like Brandon Miller, Nimari Burnett, Jaden Bradley, Rylen Griffen and Noah Clowney appear to fit that bill. With this class, Nate adds some freshman reinforcements that will hopefully be looking to follow up a wildly successful season.

We’ll post some highlights of each dude below for your enjoyment.

Roll Tide.