Alabama basketball season is almost upon us. The Crimson Tide will play two charity exhibition games as part of its preparation for its regular season opener on November 4th against UNC Asheville. The first game is tonight against Wake Forest at Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham. The next one is on Monday the 28th in Huntsville against Memphis.

If you can't travel to Birmingham to watch Alabama live, the game will be streamed live on YouTube on the Hibbet Sports channel beginning at 7:00 p.m. CST.

Alabama enters the season with a loaded roster with the highest expectations in school history. Fresh off the first Final Four in program history, Tide hoops fans are thirsty for more. The team enters the season with its highest preseason ranking ever, sitting at No. 2 in the AP poll behind the Kansas Jayhawks.

What can you expect in the Crimson Tide's exhibition game tonight?

Chris Youngblood suffered an ankle injury in practice a few weeks ago that will keep him out for at least the first month of the season, so he's obviously out tonight.

In addition to Youngblood, graduate transfer Latrell Wrightsell and true freshman Aiden Sherrell will also miss the game with minor injuries. That leaves the Crimson Tide with 10 scholarship players, all of whom will see a good portion of their playing time.

In a word: experimental. Nate Oats has always viewed exhibition games as an extension of training. That applies to today's contest as well and is in no way an indication of what the rotations will look like when the Crimson Tide starts playing important games.

If Alabama is fully healthy, I expect the starting five to be all graduates: Mark Sears, Latrell Wrightsell, Chris Youngblood, Grant Nelson and Clifford Omoruyi. With this starting lineup, Alabama has perhaps the most experienced starting lineup in the country, as well as three guys who hit over 40% last season in Sears, Wrightsell and Youngblood, and a fourth – Grant Nelson – who can get hot from deep .

It is a dynamic backcourt and frontcourt with great length and shot blocking ability.

Two of those projected starters are out tonight, so it will be interesting to see where Alabama goes. I would expect either sophomore Aden Holloway or true freshman Labaron Philon to start alongside Sears in the backcourt.

Holloway gives you a bigger shooting presence and could score the point by moving Sears to the two-guard spot he played frequently in his first season with the Crimson Tide. However, Philon gives Alabama a better defensive lineup, although not the threat as a three-point shooter like Holloway.

In Youngblood's place, I think there are three different players that Oats will consider in the starting role. When the regular season begins and Wrightsell is back, Alabama could decide to start three guards and throw Philon with Sears and Wrightsell. Obviously that's not an option tonight.

Instead, rookie Derrion Reid is the most likely to step into that starting role. The only area of ​​concern with Reid and Philon's starting lineup is that the Tide's three-point shooting will take a major hit as Sears becomes the only real threat from deep.

That's why it wouldn't surprise me if Pepperdine Houston trades Mallette as a starter. He shot 41% from three last season, and that could be a confidence boost for a kid who opted for a very different squad in March and is entering the season with a much more uncertain role than he originally thought .

We've also heard rumors of a huge Tide lineup, so don't be surprised if Jarin Stevenson either starts at the three or sees extended playing time alongside Nelson and Omoruyi to see if this lineup can work or not.

This is about experimenting and finding out what works and, more importantly, what really doesn't.

As I said above, Oats is going to treat this game like practice, meaning he's going to come up with some crazy lineup combinations that we may never see again. It could lead to disastrous results. The Alabama team from a few years ago that went to the NCAA tournament as the No. 1 overall seed was destroyed in an exhibition by a TCU team that didn't even make the tournament that year.

It's basketball. Things happen. This especially happens when you throw things against the wall just to see what sticks.

The interesting thing to see tonight will be how some of the players play together. The coaching staff will pay attention to that. Which players play well together? Which lineups are most effective?

Such a setting can also enable one-off scenarios. Sam Walters had a great game in an exhibition last year where he scored over 30 points, and that meant very little to his performance in the real season. So if Derrion Reid goes out and scores 30 points, don't upset him as the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft (I'm mostly talking to myself here).

However, if Labaron Philon goes 0/8 from the floor and turns over seven times, he's not an instant bust either.

Davin Cosby will return to Alabama tonight. He transferred to Wake Forest in the offseason. I don't know if it's been officially released, but I would expect the team to present him with his Final Four ring either before or after the game, which will be a great moment.