Nate Oats Opens Up About Alabama's Point Guard Depth

Alabama men's basketball has had a ton of roster turnover this offseason as four players exhausted their collegiate eligibility, four others transferred out and one declared early for the 2025 NBA Draft. In return, Alabama added four players from the transfer portal and the Crimson Tide has three incoming freshmen in its 2025 recruiting class.

However, head coach Nate Oats and company didn't exactly gain a true point guard in the process. As of right now, returnee Aden Holloway is perhaps the only "true" point guard on the 2025-26 roster, as he was the Tide's sixth man last season. However, when he shared the court with Mark Sears and/or Labaron Philon, who are no longer with the team, those two took the ball up the floor during games.

"You know what? We'd like to get, you know, obviously, we think [Latrell] Wrightsell and [Houston] Mallette can play a little point guard," Oats said on Tuesday morning at the Regions Tradition in Birmingham. That's definitely a little bit of an issue. Holloway's definitely there."

Wrightsell and Mallette, who are 6-foot-3 and 6-foot-5 respectively, each acted as shooting guards last season. That said, both of their campaigns were cut short only a few games in due to season-ending injuries, and they were designated as medical redshirts.

Neither incoming recruits Davion Hannah (6-foot-6) nor Amari Allen (6-foot-8) are true point guards, especially since the latter is considered a forward, but Oats has utilized wing players as playmakers in the past.

"f you go back to our second year, think about how we played with Herb [Jones], you know, we started Herb, and really kind of had three, two-guards around him," Oats said. "You had [Josh] Primo, [Jaden] Shackelford, and [John] Petty, and then Keon Ellis started a little bit too. All three of those guys, none of them were point guards.

"So we can play where you've got a big creating wing, which if you look at some of what we've done and maybe what we're going to bring in and what we're looking at. But yeah, we don't necessarily have to play with just a point guard with the way we play and kind of how we have with multiple handlers playing as fast as we do.

"So I think you can play with, like a three or a four handling the ball a lot, being a creator for us with how well some of those guys shoot it off the ball too."