The North Alabama Lions are a Division II blueblood learning how to be a Division I power — a program from Florence, Alabama, with two national championships in its past and its sights set on a first NCAA Division I tournament bid in its future. Few programs in America have a steeper tradition and a fresher start at the same time. The Lions are building something in the Shoals, and the rest of mid-major basketball is starting to notice.
Start with the pedigree, because it matters. North Alabama won the NCAA Division II national championship in 1979 and again in 1991, reached five Division II Final Fours, and made 14 trips to the Division II tournament. The Lions owned the Gulf South Conference for decades — regular-season and tournament titles across four decades. This is not a program learning how to win. It's a program learning how to win at a new level.
The Division I era began in 2018, and the man hired to lead it — Tony Pujol, named head coach on April 2, 2018 — remains the first and only Division I head coach in program history. Pujol, a former assistant at Alabama, Wyoming and VCU, took over a full rebuild and played the long game: recruit, develop, defend home court, and wait for the breakthrough. Eight seasons in, the breakthrough arrived all at once.
The 2024-25 season was the finest in the program's Division I life. The Lions went 24-11 overall and 14-4 in the Atlantic Sun — sharing the regular-season championship with Lipscomb, the first conference regular-season title in any sport in UNA's Division I history. They did it in front of sellout crowds at CB&S Bank Arena, ripping through the ASUN quarterfinal and semifinal at home before falling to Lipscomb in the championship game. The consolation prize was historic anyway: the program's first-ever bid to the National Invitational Tournament, where the run ended 71-62 against Bradley in the first round.
It was a 24-win season — the program's most victories since 2008 — built on a 14-1 home record that included a perfect 11-0 against conference opponents at CB&S Bank Arena. Pujol was named a finalist for the Hugh Durham Award, given to the nation's top mid-major coach, and in August 2025 the university locked him in with a five-year contract extension through 2029-30. "Coach Pujol's deep connection to our student-athletes, alumni, and community continues to fuel our rise," the athletic director said. Florence believed.
Then came the cruelest part of modern college basketball. The championship core scattered — graduation and the transfer portal gutted the roster — and the 2025-26 season became a rebuild nobody wanted. The Lions stumbled to 9-21 overall and 4-14 in the ASUN, finishing 12th, a stunning fall for a team voted the preseason media favorite. Pujol's eighth season was a reminder of the sport's new math: in the portal era, even a 24-win team can lose its entire identity in one spring.
But the foundation didn't move. CB&S Bank Arena remains one of the most electric home-court environments in mid-major basketball — 3,000 seats, the student section known as "The Vault" pressed against the floor, and a 64-28 home record since Pujol's arrival. The purple and gold faithful sold out the building within minutes for the 2025 ASUN quarterfinal. Florence is a basketball town now, and that doesn't disappear with one bad season.
And the ground shifted under the whole league in the summer of 2026. On July 1, North Alabama — along with four other Atlantic Sun schools — joined the rebranded United Athletic Conference, the product of a strategic alliance between the ASUN and the WAC. The Lions open a new chapter in a new league, with new rivals and a new path to the program's holy grail: that first Division I NCAA tournament bid.
Pujol's track record says the climb back is a matter of when, not if. In eight seasons he has produced six all-conference selections, two ASUN Freshmen of the Year, an ASUN Newcomer of the Year, a Sixth Man of the Year, a Lou Henson Award finalist and an NABC All-District player — in a district that includes multiple SEC programs. He recruits the Southeast relentlessly and develops players over time, the old-fashioned way, in a sport that increasingly doesn't.
The Lions' identity is pure Shoals: tough, physical, defensive-minded, and unbeatable at home when the Vault is rocking. The Division II banners hang as a reminder of what this program has been. The next banner — the first one that says NCAA Division I tournament — is the one everybody in Florence is waiting for. With Pujol signed through 2030 and a new conference to conquer, the wait might not be much longer.
The first taste of Division I postseason came in 2023, when an 18-15 Lions squad earned a bid to the College Basketball Invitational — the program's first national postseason tournament at the D-I level. It was a modest milestone that felt enormous in Florence: proof that Pujol's long game was working, and a preview of the 24-win breakthrough that would follow two seasons later.