Report: Alabama assistant Preston Murphy turns down offer to join Darian DeVries' Indiana staff

With Darian DeVries taking over at Indiana, he looked toward Alabama to try and build his staff, and that included taking a swing at hiring assistant Preston Murphy away from the Crimson Tide, according to Jeff Goodman of The Field of 68. The duo have a past, crossing paths while working at Creighton, but Murphy elected to remain working with Nate Oats.

Goodman noted that Murphy is close to getting a head coaching gig of his own, and his reputation on the recruiting trail precedes him. It isn’t hard to figure out why he opted to remain with Alabama for the time being, after the Crimson Tide made it to the Final Four two seasons ago, and the Elite Eight during the 2025 Men’s NCAA Tournament.

With Oats leading the charge and Murphy as one of his top confidants, there’s no telling how high Alabama can climb. The Crimson Tide have been as good as nearly any basketball program in the country over the last five years, and Paul Finebaum believes they can close the gap to a national title sooner rather than later.

“Oh, (the gap) definitely can be closed because, I mean, I mean, it takes, it takes the right players and Alabama had the right players at times this year. They just weren’t consistent enough,” Finebaum said, via McElroy & Cubelic in the Morning.

“I mean, to me, and I understand what you’re grading that on as the highest possible curve. You’re grading that on a national championship curve, which I, frankly, have never looked at Alabama Basketball as, ‘How does Alabama Basketball compare to Duke?’. But, in this case, that’s where, that’s where we are because, I think, you can’t argue that Nate Oats is one of the two or three best coaches in America. But, you know, he just has to continue doing what he’s doing. I don’t think anything else really matters.”

Alabama is 129-48 (.729) in the last half-decade under Oats. That includes winning four conference titles in the SEC and five consecutive berths in the NCAA Tournament. Three of those teams have earned either No. 1 or No. 2 seeds while four of those teams have made the second weekend or better with a pair of Sweet 16 in ’21 and ’23, their first-ever spot in the Final Four in ’24, and another Elite Eight now in ’25.

Those are numbers Darian DeVries is aspiring towards with Indiana. He wanted to get in on what Alabama is doing, but it wasn’t meant to be. Preston Murphy is sticking around Tuscaloosa, at least for the foreseeable future.

— On3’s Sam Gillenwater contributed to this article.