If someone takes the correct courses, works hard, and graduates, he's going to be as good as any graduate from Harvard when he leaves.
But, like any state school, admissions standards for in-state kids is going to be lower, so the bottom 20% of UA-Tuscaloosa will be worse than the bottom 20% of Harvard.
At my institute, in one of the classes, there were grad students who came from Harvard, Yale, and UA-Tuscaloosa. They were all about the same in terms of quality of knowledge and work ethic, and all three did a fine job as grad students.