This is an opinion column.
A mere 185 miles from perhaps the most iconic intersection in American pop culture, the Alabama basketball program found itself at another Saturday night.
Not exactly standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, this Crimson Tide program saw its past cross with the present and then flip a focus toward the seemingly bright but ultimately unknowable future.
With icons of the program among the 74,720 in State Farm Stadium for its Final Four debut, decades of missed opportunity washed away when the ball was tipped at 5:50 p.m. local time. You had everyone from Wendell Hudson to Antoine Pettway, Richard Hendrix to Ennis Whatley and Trevor Releford as part of the biggest crowd to witness a Crimson Tide basketball game.
Former coaches Mark Gottfried and Avery Johnson were there too.
It was hard to ignore the surreal feeling of seeing this program -- equally proud yet classically underachieving in March -- join the Final Four fraternity surrounded by so much of its history.
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Also encouraging to see how this current team didn’t play like they were just happy to be there. They looked loose all week and never suffered from the posterior clinching that so often swallows first-timers.
The 86-72 final wasn’t necessarily representative of the night as Alabama gave UConn its best fight of an otherwise casual march to the brink of its own history. The Huskies are just in another class -- one that sees an opponent make 72.7% of its first-half 3s but still faces a four-point halftime deficit.
Anytime you nearly double your turnover total (4) with dunks (7), you’re on the right path.
If anything, the UConn of today offered a blueprint for Alabama’s future.
Because the second that buzzer sounded at 8:03 p.m., the focus shifted from now to what’s next. There’s no mistaking this venture into uncharted territory wasn’t as much about rewriting history as setting a new baseline to measure success.
No longer will Final Four appearances be the ceiling.
Alabama’s now among the 37 schools who’ve been there once and now looking to be the 23rd to make for at least a second.
It clearly wasn’t lost on the current roster even in a somber locker room Saturday night.
“Look around this locker room and you see a lot of young talent,” Alabama forward Nick Pringle said 29 minutes after the final buzzer. “There’s only one guy who can’t come back to college.”
That’s true and also what makes this era of college sports both interesting and hard to predict. Only Aaron Estrada has completely exhausted his eligibility, which in the past would have this Crimson Tide in bold type among the top tier of early preseason 2024-25 rankings.
But if the most recent offseason offered any lessons, nothing can be taken for granted with a roster in the transfer era. The locker room in Glendale on Saturday looked nothing like the sad one in Louisville a year earlier after a premature Sweet 16 exit.
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After three starters went to pro and three other top players went to the portal, all momentum from what felt like the best team in modern history felt lost. Only Mark Sears, Rylan Griffen and Pringle returned as four former McDonald’s All-Americans tapped out.
The hockey-style line shift of mostly mid-major transfer replacements, it turned out, found more success than the elite talent that went to the NBA (Brandon Miller, Noah Clowney and Charles Bediako), Memphis (Jahvon Quinerly), Michigan (Nimari Burnett) and Arizona (Jaden Bradley).
Big decisions face the engines of this Final Four run as NIL money adds to the NBA/transfer calculus. Thanks to the extra year of COVID eligibility, players like Sears, Grant Nelson, Latrell Wrightsell and Pringle can return for another shot at playing on Final Four Monday.
It’s worth remembering Sears entered the NBA draft process last offseason before opting to return for this season.
And there’s always wildcard decisions that are hard to predict. Recall Quinerly took the same dip in the NBA draft pool before opting to return … then transferred to Memphis.
From listening to Nate Oats last summer, he clearly didn’t expect Bediako to go pro when he did.
So nothing and nobody can be taken for granted when looking at those with remaining eligibility and a pencil-written 2024-25 roster.
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It was too early to gauge who was thinking what from postgame interviews Saturday night as non-committal answers varied only in the wording.
“It’s really in God’s hands, honestly,” Pringle said. “I feel like I finished the year pretty strongly, not tonight. I’m not sure how many minutes I played tonight but I tried to do whatever I could to motivate my team.”
As it stands, Alabama has the nation’s No. 4 incoming recruiting class headlined by 5-star forward Derrion Reid and includes Pepperdine transfer Houston Mallette.
Departures from that sad Saturday locker room are inevitable and, frankly, mathematically required to hit the scholarship number for next season.
It’s just part of the modern reality of college basketball and last year’s offseason churn ultimately produced the most successful team in Crimson Tide history.
Surrounded by that legacy Saturday night, the Alabama present both brought honor to the past while setting a new bar for the future.
An intersection this program craved is now the challenge.
So they’ll head down that road, loosen some of that load and see whose climbing back in.
But one thing’s clear: Alabama won’t be taking it easy this offseason.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.
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