Alabama is one of the many teams in the SEC that could make a huge leap in the right direction from its 2016-17 season. The Crimson Tide has a stellar —- by its standards anyway —- recruiting class coming with five-star point guard Collin Sexton and five-star shooting guard John Petty along with a couple other recruits.
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That would have already made them better than their 10-8 conference record, but now they are getting back a superb piece of the offense in rising sophomore Braxton Key.
The 6'8", 225-pound forward was the team's leading scorer at 12 points a game to go with 5.7 rebounds and 2.5 assists a game. He shot a solid enough 33 percent from behind the three-point line and 43.3 percent overall from the floor. Now that he should have scoring help, expect this team to be much better than its 19-15 record from last season.