One of Alabama basketball’s newcomers won’t be joining the team until August.

Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats appeared on The Gary Harris Show on Tide 102.9 FM on Thursday and was asked about junior college transfer James Rojas. The first-year head coach detailed why Rojas won’t be with the men’s basketball team this summer like the other new faces.

“He’s not going to be able till August, like for the fall. He won’t be here this summer,” Oats said Thursday. “The SEC has a rule that your math, English and science have to be taken in class and he had taken some of those classes online, planning to come to us at Buffalo.

“I guess some of the classes just work out better where he went to junior college at Hutch. He took them online, so they always had their guys take them online. We didn’t necessarily plan on being in the SEC, so now that he wants to play for us in the SEC, he’s got to take some of those classes sitting in a chair and so he’s got to do that over the summer. He’s finishing up his course work over the summer, and then he’ll be with us in the fall.”

The 6-8, 215-pound forward was a National Junior College Athletic Association and National Association of Basketball Coaches first-team All-American at Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College before signing with Alabama. Rojas was named the 2019 Jayhawk West Conference Player of the Year, as well as a first-team All-Jayhawk West honoree, while also being named to the All-Region VI First Team and Region VI All-Tournament team this past season.

Alabama JUCO signee James Rojas

Playing in 29 games as a sophomore during the 2018-19 campaign, Rojas, who originally committed to Oats while he was at the University of Buffalo, was Hutchinson’s leading scorer and the Jayhawk Conference’s third-leading scorer at 19.0 points per game, while also collecting 6.8 rebounds and 1.5 steals in 25.8 minutes a contest. The Jamestown, N.Y., native finished the season shooting 50.4 percent from the field and 38.4 percent from beyond the arc, knocking down 28 three-pointers (28-of-73). He was also a 79.5 percent free throw shooter.

“We’ve been watching James since he was early in high school,” Oats said. “He came to our team camps, and he was up at individual camps and whatnot. He’s a really skilled, tough, hard-nosed winner is what he is. And we were super excited to get him at Buffalo. Shoot, the kid was, I think, ranked as the fourth-best junior college player in the country. He was a first-team All-American, so that puts him in the top-five junior college players right now.

“And to get a kid of that caliber to be able to step in right away -- he’s a grown man. Some high school kids will come in with a grown man body, but this kid’s played two years of college basketball, so we’re excited to get him.”

Rojas joins graduate transfer guard James “Beetle” Bolden (West Virginia) and freshman center Raymond Hawkins as spring signees. Last fall during the early signing period, the Crimson Tide inked a trio of players in forward Juwan Gary and guards Jaylen Forbes and Jaden Shackelford who, combined with Rojas, make up the six members of Alabama’s 2019 signing class.

The Alabama basketball team held its first full-team workout of the summer Thursday, May 30.

Contact Charlie Potter by 247Sports' personal messaging or on Twitter (@Charlie_Potter).

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