All even at 42 at halftime, the West took over the second half of the McDonald’s All-American boys game on Tuesday night to pull away for a 102-86 win. The West did it behind a Co-MVP effort from five-star Caleb Holt, who finished the game with 11 points, five rebounds, and four assists. Missouri commit Jason Crowe Jr. was also Co-MVP with 16 points, five assists, and two rebounds.
In March, Holt, the No. 4 recruit in the country, committed to Arizona, choosing Tommy Lloyd’s Wildcats over Alabama. Oats’s 2026 recruiting class is still strong, with three four-star commits: Qayden Samuels, Tarris Bouie, and Jaxon Richardson, who also played on Tuesday night and finished with 13 points and three rebounds. But Holt proved that he’s on a different level and exactly what Alabama desperately needs.
Caleb Holt named Co-MVP of McDonald’s All-American game
College basketball has changed since Oats led the Crimson Tide to the Final Four two years ago. That may sound absurd, but in that time, the best teams in the country have supersized, opting for massive front courts and rim dominance over the high-variance style of five-out three-point shooting that Oats prefers.
That stylistic shift has upset-proofed many of the top teams, providing an incredibly high offensive floor with easy baskets at the rim and offensive rebounds to control the possession game. Holt isn’t a massive front-court player, but at 6-foot-5, 200 pounds, he’s the type of power guard who can defend up and down the lineup, grab rebounds, and attack the basket while still having a capable outside stroke. In other words, he’s the perfect evolution of the Oats offense.
After the Tide’s Sweet 16 loss to Michigan, Oats openly acknowledged that his team didn’t have enough size, once again bemoaning Charles Bediako’s eligibility ruling. However, Alabama doesn’t just need a stable of centers to protect the rim and bang inside; it also needs positional size on the interior. The Aden Holloway suspension revealed that.
While it’s hard to argue that Alabama was better without Holloway, the Tide dominated their first two games of the NCAA Tournament with a bigger lineup, slotting London Jemison at the four next to Aiden Sherrell, which slid Amari Allen to the three and Latrell Wrightsell Jr. to the four.
Wrightsell thrived defending guards, most notably Texas Tech’s Christian Anderson, and Allen appeared much more comfortable on the wing with Labaron Philon Jr. as the only small guard on the floor. Michigan was in another league entirely, one of the most supersized rosters in the country, but Alabama’s pace was able to run their 7-foot-4 center Aday Mara off the floor.
Even in a blowout loss, Alabama’s success against Michigan’s three-big lineup proves there is a happy medium for the Tide where they play with pace, and great positional size on the wing, but without sacrificing anything on the interior. That’s possible, and it takes big, powerful guards like Holt, who displayed an impressive knack for rebounding on Tuesday night in Phoenix.
Alabama’s incoming class represents that shift, all 6-foot-4 to 6-foot-5 playmaking wings, but Holt is the platonic ideal of that player, and he gave Alabama fans a little reminder of that against the best competition in the country.