Led by Mark Sears, No. 2 Alabama is perhaps SEC’s best hope to end national title drought

Alabama enters the season as perhaps the Southeastern Conference’s best hope to end its national title drought in men’s basketball.

Nate Oats and the second-ranked Crimson Tide are fully embracing those expectations, with Mark Sears and Grant Nelson returning and several newcomers immediately grabbing starting roles. A 110-54 win over UNC Asheville on Monday night was a nice way to break into the season for a team coming off its first Final Four appearance.

Overall, it’s hard to downplay a roster that added one of the nation’s top recruiting classes and some key transfers. No SEC team has won a national championship since John Calipari’s 2012 Kentucky team.

Alabama headed a group of nine SEC teams in the preseason Top 25, so Oats’ team is hardly the league’s only potential contender. Just the most prominent one entering the season.

“We’ve got a really good team,” Oats said leading up to that opening mismatch. “We know that. Our guys deserve to have some attention but getting ranked high in the preseason and actually playing well during the season don’t always correlate.

“We have talent. Talent doesn’t win games. Talent doesn’t necessarily guarantee good basketball, but we do have talent. People are expecting us to do well based on what we’ve done here in the last four years.”

Alabama was the No. 1 overall NCAA Tournament seed two seasons ago. This team has a preseason All-America guard in Sears, who scored 20 points in the opener. Sears and Nelson both opted to come back instead of turning pro and three newcomers started against UNC Asheville.

They still have to do it in bigger games, but the opener provided a look at the new additions and the potential lineups.

Former Rutgers big man Clifford Omoruyi, who filled the biggest need as an interior presence, debuted with 16 points and eight rebounds in just 19 minutes. He didn’t miss any of his six shots.

Freshmen Labaron Philon (10 points, nine assists) and Derrion Reed (nine points, six rebounds) also started. And Auburn transfer Aden Holloway had 11 points and no turnovers.

Much tougher tests await, starting with a visit to No. 14 Purdue on Nov. 15. An Alabama team that led the nation in scoring last season still clearly has the firepower, but the offseason emphasis on improving the defense remains to be tested.

“We know that we can score but if we play defense, it’ll be easy to score,” returning guard Latrell Wrightsell Jr. said after the game. “Being able to get stops and get in transition is what we want to do. That’s our mind-set. We want to come out here and show that we can actually defend.”

Oats said Monday that Pepperdine transfer Houston Mallette and freshman Naas Cunningham will redshirt this season.

Alabama is expecting South Florida transfer Chris Youngblood, the American Athletic Conference co-player of the year, back from an injury around mid-December.

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