Alabama women’s basketball is in the midst of a historic season, in which the team has achieved a perfect nonconference record for the first time in program history and holds three ranked SEC wins.
“Nobody expected us to do this,” head coach Kristy Curry said after the team’s most recent win over Ole Miss. “We’re doing this because of the culture. Culture doesn’t graduate.”
In a season of rebuilding following the departures of now-WNBA players Sarah Ashlee Barker and Aaliyah Nye, Alabama is achieving one of its best records in recent program history.
To give historical context, the 2026 Alabama team is one of just seven 20-win seasons for the program this century, and the season is still ongoing. At its current rate, the team could continue to rise up the list of the best in program history.
The team that achieved the most wins in program history was in the 1993-94 season under coach Rick Moody. That team saw a 26-7 record overall and the only Final Four appearance in Alabama’s history.
That year’s postseason run was a Cinderella story, with the Crimson Tide entering the tournament as a No. 6 seed and defeating a No.1, No. 2 and No. 3 seed en route to the Final Four.
Although reaching that level of postseason success would be a tall task for this year’s team, reaching the program’s win record of 26 is a feat within reach.
Alabama currently sits at 20-6 with four regular-season games left. Although three of them are against ranked opponents, it would only take a moderately successful stretch to end the season and a few wins in the SEC and NCAA Tournaments for the team to make history.
Should the Crimson Tide approach that win total, the 2026 team would be in the company of Moody’s 1990s teams that regularly won upwards of 20 games. Those teams frequently went on multiple-round NCAA Tournament runs, and Alabama has a chance to do the same this year, given its regular-season success.
In eight seasons from 1992-1999, Moody’s teams averaged 23.25 wins per year and made a total of five Sweet 16 appearances. The program has not reached the Sweet 16 since then, but Alabama’s current regular-season trajectory puts its win volume on par with those ‘90s teams.
Those years weren’t the last time the program saw regular-season success, however. Just last season, the Crimson Tide went 24-8 and barely missed out on a Sweet 16 appearance after a two-overtime loss to Maryland in the Round of 32.
That team also made Alabama history in a new way by having three players selected in the WNBA draft, including two top 15 picks in Barker and Nye. Together with Zaay Green, drafted in the third round, those three are among only 11 Alabama players to ever get drafted.
“It’s incredible,” Curry said of the team’s historic draft year. “If you come to Alabama, we believe we can win at a really high level and prepare you for the next level.”
The 2026 team is unlikely to match that level of professional output, with ESPN’s latest mock draft having no Alabama players projected in the first round. The team has a nearly identical record to last year’s at this point in the season, however, and has more ranked wins through the same number of games.
If Alabama can exceed its postseason success of last year and break into the Sweet 16, this team will achieve the program’s best tournament run in 28 years.
“We’re built for ‘hard,’” Curry said. “We’re hard-nosed, we’re gritty. We’re maybe not always the tallest, but we find a way.”
