#20 Alabama v Longwood Game Thread

College basketball is back, as just about every team in the country opens up the season tonight. The 20th-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide is no exception, as the boys in Crimson get set to tip-off Year Four of the Nate Oats era. If you haven’t gotten a chance yet, make sure to look through either of my season preview articles, or the preview of tonight’s matchup with the Longwood Lancers - a tournament team with a lot of experience favored to repeat as Big South champs.

Oats and the squad will be looking to “bounce back” from an up-and-down season that still ended with a second consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance. In fact, they’ll be looking to make a third straight appearance in the Big Dance for the first time since Mark Gottfried led the Tide to five straight from 2002-2006.

That all starts tonight. In what should be one of the better matchups across the college hoops landscape on opening night, Alabama enters as a 14.5-point favorite. Can the Tide start off the 2022-23 campaign with a strong win?

The game can be streamed on SEC Network+, which is available to anyone with an ESPN+ account or a subscription to a cable service that includes the SEC Network.

Projected Starting Five

GUARD 6’1 Mark Sears

GUARD 6’5 Nimari Burnett

WING 6’8 Brandon Miller

POST 6’9 Noah Gurley

POST 6’9 Charles Bediako

**UPDATE**

Apparently, Dom Welch suffered a lower body injury at some point in the past 48 hours...