Why Alabama Basketball is Playing in Canada to Kick Off Tough Three-Game Road Stretch

The Crimson Tide is facing No. 4 Purdue and Canadian Zach Edey in Toronto Saturday afternoon.

Scheduling tough non-conference opponents has been part of Nate Oats' philosophy since arriving at Alabama. So his Crimson Tide team taking on No. 4 Purdue this Saturday afternoon is nothing new. However, what is new is the location: Canada. 

Alabama (6-2) and the Boilermakers (8-1) will meet Saturday inside Toronto's Coca-Cola Coliseum. The matchup will feature one of the best big men in college basketball, Purdue's Zach Edey, and was originally supposed to showcase a Canadian big on the Alabama side with forward Charles Bediako. 

Edey is the Boilermaker's 7-foot-4 senior center from Toronto. He has been one of the most dominant players in college basketball over the last four years. This season, he's in the top six in the country in scoring and rebounding at 23.7 points and 11.2 rebounds per game. Edey will no doubt receive a hero's welcome in his hometown.  

The plan got slightly derailed when Bediako declared for the NBA draft over the offseason, but Oats and Alabama stuck with the matchup. 

"You’d get the two seven-footers going against each other, so that’s where it started," Oats said earlier this week. "By the time we realized Charles wouldn’t be here this year, it was kind of down the path, and we said let’s just go with it anyways if they were still willing to do it even though we didn’t have Charles, which they were. I like playing tough teams. I like the venue. We get Zach Edey’s homecoming parade. We’re there for it. We didn’t bring Charles with us for the homecoming parade, but that’s how this thing started."

International games aren't a foreign concept to Oats. He took his team on the European tour to play games in France and Spain in the summer of 2022. Alabama also played in a Thanksgiving tournament in the Bahamas back in Oats' first season in 2019. But this is the first time the Crimson Tide has played a one-off regular season game in a different country under Oats. 

Alabama basketball's director of operations Josh Pierre has made sure everyone has passports and visas squared away. 

The Toronto, Ontario area has been a recruiting hotbed for Oats. After spending six years at Buffalo just south of the border, Oats grew quite familiar with recruiting in Canada and carried that over into his job at Alabama. During Oats' tenure in Tuscaloosa, Alabama has signed three players from Ontario: Bediako, Keon Ambrose-Hylton and Joshua Primo. 

With less than a two-hour drive between Buffalo and Toronto, Oats is expecting a good number of friends at the game to cheer on the Crimson Tide. 

"It’s going to a foreign country, but it’s a lot different than going to Europe," Oats said. "They’re used to having a lot of people passing between that U.S. and Canadian border. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve got some friends from Buffalo that will be up at the game. We’ve got some of our former players in Toronto who have relatives coming to the game, so it’ll be good."

The neutral site game against No. 4 Purdue kicks off a brutal three-game road stretch for the Crimson Tide. After Toronto, Alabama will face No. 10 Creighton on the road in Omaha before traveling south to Phoenix for technically another neutral game with No. 1 Arizona. 

"We like to schedule hard," Oats said. "We get guys up for the game. We get deficiencies exposed that we can work on. Purdue’s probably the best team in the country, and if not, it’s Arizona who we also play in this three-game stretch."

Alabama and Purdue are set to tip off at 12:30 p.m. on Fox.  

How to Watch: Alabama Men's Basketball Playing Purdue in Toronto