The Alabama basketball team will add another monster game to its upcoming non-conference schedule, finalizing a home-and-home match against fellow Purdue for a 2024 Final Four appearance, Jon Rothstein reports. It is reported that he did.
The series begins this season with West Lafayette playing Purdue and returns in Tuscaloosa in 2025-26. The series comes one year after the teams played a one-off game in Toronto, Canada, last December, which Purdue won 92-86.
The Crimson Tide's 2024-25 non-conference schedule features a variety of challenging games, as expected given the way Nate Oats' schedule is structured. In addition to traveling north to play Purdue, the Crimson Tide will play a home game against Creighton in Tuscaloosa as a return game from a series that began last season.
Alabama will also play Illinois State in Birmingham in the CM Newton Classic and travel to Las Vegas for three games at the Players Era Festival (Houston, Notre Dame, Rutgers, San Diego State, Oregon and Texas A&M). is the other participant). The second annual SEC/ACC Challenge will also feature an unannounced game.
Oats was notorious for his grueling schedule at Alabama, but players said last season's tough non-conference schedule was one of the biggest reasons the program reached the Final Four for the first time in history.
The college basketball season begins Nov. 4, and Alabama's opening opponent and several other nonconference games have yet to be announced. These announcements will continue throughout the offseason.