NCAA Basketball: Way-too-early top-25 power rankings for 2021-22 season

Alabama is going to really miss both John Petty and Herbert Jones, a pair of elite athletes and double-digit scorers that could do everything on both ends. They’ll also be missing forwards Jordan Bruner and Alex Reese as well but there’s plenty of talent both coming back and on the way for the SEC program.

The Crimson Tide will be bringing back the star backcourt duo of Jahvon Quinerly and leading scorer  Jaden Shackelford. Quinerly actually came off the bench in favor of freshman Joshua Primo but with plenty of ball-handlers already in the lineup, it made sense to have the former five-star prospect lead the second unit.

There’s plenty of depth among the rest of the supporting cast, including Juwan Gary, Keon Ellis, and Darius Miles. Former four-star center prospect Alex Tchikou missed this past season with an injury but will be back to provide frontcourt depth.

All of this alone would make Alabama a top-20 team but that doesn’t even include a current top-3 recruiting class, led by five-star point guard JD Davison. Four-star wing Jusaun Holt will be the air apparent to Jones and Petty, while Langston Wilson is one of the top JUCO commits in the 2021 class. And most recently, the Tide landed top-30 center recruit Charles Bediako to give them a star big man to round out the class.

There’s so much depth on the roster that I wouldn’t be surprised to see this team lose a couple of bench players to the portal. But for those that remain, they will collectively create a title contender with few issues anywhere.