Nate Oats comments on passing Alabama football in respective rankings

After three straight wins, two of which were over teams ranked No. 1 in the country at the time, Alabama is now ranked No. 4 in the latest AP Poll. Nate Oats and his team made history with their most recent ranking, as it becomes the first time since Nick Saban has been coaching the Crimson Tide football team that the basketball team has been ranked higher, which Oats reacted to this week.

“I’ll say this, I think that speaks to the level of football that Nick Saban has brought to Alabama, wow, like how long has he been here, how many years?” Oats asked members of the media. “16 years, so for 16 years there’s a lot of polls that have come out the football team’s been, I mean my guess is has been either one or two in half of them, the basketball team would’ve had to been pretty good to be ranked ahead of them. And you know what, maybe when he was getting it built in the first year or two, obviously our basketball wasn’t at the level we’ve gotten it to now.”

Oats believes the recent history he’s made says more about the football program than the basketball program, as Saban lost three games this season for the first time since 2010, and Oats is looking to keep his team focused during one of their most impressive starts in school history.

“I think it speaks to how ridiculous the football program is around here for it to go that long, on our end we’re just trying to get a little bit better every day. And we’re obviously coming off of a big win over a number one team on the road, so people recognize it. Also realize how fleeting that stuff can be, what’s North Carolina ranked today? They were number one two weeks ago, so its nice to be ranked high, let’s build it up for our fans, let’s get everybody out here Tuesday, we’ve got the number four ranked team in the country playing at home against Memphis who’s a really good team, it’ll be a great game,” Oats said.

Oats and his squad knocked off No. 1 ranked North Carolina and Houston in two weeks’ time, and with the Cougars dropping to No. 5 in the polls and the Tar Heels dropping out completely he understands how quickly these rankings can change for a team.

“But if you don’t take care of business today, it’s gonna be gone, if you don’t take care of business tomorrow the rankings are out the window,” Oats said. “And I’ll say this too, me and coach Sampson talked before the Houston game, he’s an unbelievable coach, we said win or lose we’re both gonna get a lot better from this game.”

Oats spoke more on their recent upset win over Houston, and how crucial his team’s performance will be moving forward now that they’ve gotten an early taste of success.

“We won that game last year, they went to an Elite 8 without (Tramon) Mark and Sass (Marcus Sasser) or either one. And I talk to our team, it’s a lot easier to handle failure more of the time than it is to handle success. So we just had some success, are we mature enough to handle the success that we’ve had, because last year we weren’t,” Oats explained. “Last year we had some success and we didn’t handle it well, we’ve been talking about that all summer, all fall, all coming into this, the test is here. We’ve now gotten the success, can we handle the success?”

Oats got back on topic with surpassing the No. 5 ranked Crimson Tide football team, even vouching for Saban’s team to have a spot in the College Football Playoff.

“So I got off topic a little bit, I didn’t know that, it’s great. Football team’s still fifth best football team, and to be honest with you that ranking’s probably off too to be honest with you, they’re probably better than the fifth best football team in the country,” Oats admitted. “Whoever they lost to and however those rankings are determined, they probably deserve to be, not probably, they do deserve to be in that playoffs but they’re not. So we’ll see if we deserve the number four ranking tomorrow.”

Oats and his squad will defend their newly given ranking on Tuesday when they take on Memphis at 9:00 p.m. ET in a game airing on ESPN2.