Three Alabama Freshmen Produce ‘A Lot of Good Moments’ in Preseason Win Over Furman

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Alabama basketball had a plethora of players showcase what the 2026-27 Crimson Tide is about during Thursday night’s 111-93 preseason home victory over Furman.

Alabama signed six players to its freshman class and three of them faced the Paladins. The first-year trio of Tarris Bouie, Cole Cloer and Qayden Samuels each played for over half of the game and they all made a major impact during their unofficial collegiate debuts.

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“Tarris ended up winning the Hard Hat for us tonight with his activity, led us in rebounds with eight,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said during the postgame press conference. “He scored it, shoot, almost our leading scorer with 18.”

Every game and practice, Tide players are given a certain amount of non-scoreboard points for deflections, steals, blocks, rebounds and loose balls. Offensive rebounds, diving on the floor and drawing fouls are also methods of gaining blue-collar points. Whichever player tallies the most at the end of the day/night is rewarded with a construction worker hard hat. Pretty impressive that Bouie, who also swiped an absurd six steals, took it home in his first game against collegiate competition.

Oats said he was “pretty happy” with the offensive output from the freshmen, as they had “a lot of good moments” in heavy minutes. Cloer, who transferred from NC State after redshirting as an early enrollee, couldn’t have started his Crimson Tide career much better. Cloer scored nine points within his first 12 minutes of action and finished the night with 14 points on 4 of 10 from downtown.

“I thought Cole came out, made some shots early for us, which is huge, kind of got us going. We were struggling a bit there early offensively, thought that was big,” Oats said. “You look at the defensive efficiency when he was on the floor versus when he was off the floor, he had the best defensive leverage by anybody on the team too. So good game for Cole.”

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Publish date : 2026-10-09 11:00:00

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