Alabama basketball is working to schedule a game against St. John’s, UA’s NIL collective announced on Thursday. The game, which would be played at Madison Square Garden in New York, will likely be played Nov. 8, Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports reported.
Rothstein also reported that St. John’s will make a return trip to Alabama during the 2026-27 season, in a game played at Legacy Arena in Birmingham. The Red Storm, coached by Rick Pitino, was a No. 2 seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, and is expected to be a top five team in the nation for the 2025-26 season.
The upcoming season won’t be an exception to Alabama head coach Nate Oats’ policy of scheduling difficult non-conference slates. The Crimson Tide also has games scheduled against Purdue, Arizona and Illinois, along with a trip to the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas and the SEC/ACC challenge.
However, Oats has said Alabama will reevaluate that policy going forward, given the difficulty of the SEC schedule.
“There’s no off nights,” Oats said of the SEC slate to SiriusXM College Sports Radio in April. “I think it’s good, that’s why I schedule non-conference, but we we may have to evaluate our non-conference schedule based on how tough our conference schedule is right now.”
Alabama’s 2024-25 season ended in the Elite Eight, where it lost to Duke. St. John’s was upset in the second round of the NCAA Tournament by John Calipari’s Arkansas.
The Crimson Tide last faced St. John’s in the 1982 NCAA Tournament, when Wimp Sanderson’s UA won 69-68. Meanwhile, Oats is 1-1 against Pitino, having split a pair of matchups with his Iona team.
