Nate Oats and Alabama basketball pulled off a stunner on Thursday afternoon with the commitment of 4-star wing Jaxon Richardson, the No. 27 overall player in the composite and the son of former NBA All-Star Jason Richardson.
Most insiders believed Richardson was going to commit to Creighton, and even jumped the gun on publishing those stories. But the Crimson Tide won out in the end, thanks to a long-standing relationship with Alabama assistant coach Preston Murphy, and Oats's closeness with the family developed from recruiting Jaxon's older brother Jase a year before.
The elder Richardson took to social media to detail his son's decision in response to a message board post by recruiting insider Joe Tipton, who said Alabama landed his son without much effort:
"This is a really bad take when you have no idea about the relationship between the Alabama coaching staff and my family," Jason Richardson said on X in response to Tipton's post.
"Although Creighton did an amazing job at recruiting Jaxon, Let me give you some background you clearly don’t have insight on. The reason I wore #32 in high school was because of Preston Murphy. He was one of the best players to ever come out of our hometown of Saginaw. In fact, my freshman year I chose to attend the same high school because he went there.
"Nate Oats and Preston also recruited my son Jase and began building a relationship very early with Jaxon during Jase’s recruitment back in 2023. Most recently, when Jaxon was hospitalized with the flu in January, Nate Oats was calling my wife Jackie and texting me every day checking in on him. So when you talk about “priority,” understand this first, this decision wasn’t based on a moment it’s built on a 30+ year relationship between Preston and me, plus an almost four year recruiting relationship with Jaxon.
"That’s more than enough for Jaxon to know he was a priority."
Jason Richardson says his son's decision to go to Alabama was based on '30+ years' of relationships
It's hard to ever overstate just how elite Alabama assistant coach Preston Murphy is as a recruiter. He seems to have longstanding relationships with every recruit imaginable, and his past relationship with Jason Richardson - along with the recruitment of Jase a year ago - paid off in a big way for the Crimson Tide to land Jaxon.
Alabama was long seen as the favorite for the younger Richardson throughout his recruiting process, but after landing Tarris Bouie and Qayden Samuels in the 2026 class, it didn't feel like he was as big of a priority for them.
But it all worked out in the end, and his addition vaults the Crimson Tide into the Top 10 of the composite for the 2026 recruiting class.