Nate Oats shares keys to Alabama winning a national championship

Alabama secured an SEC regular season title, won the SEC tournament, and on Selection Sunday earned the overall number one seed in the NCAA Tournament. They’ve been one of the most dominant teams in the nation all season long, and head coach Nate Oats details three keys that will keep the Crimson Tide dominant in their hopes of taking the national championship back to Tuscaloosa.

“I think we’ve got a really good chance to win it,” Oats said. “If you’re going to give me three keys, I’m going to go back to what has kind of bothered us a little bit this year. Turnovers. If we can consistently take care of the ball, not turn it over where we get shots up, that’s number one.”

Alabama played undoubtedly well all season, but turnovers were their weakness, entering the NCAA Tournament as the SEC’s worst turnover team averaging 14.2 per game. They won the turnover battle in two of their three conference tournament games and will be looking to keep it that way moving forward.

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“Number two is just our defensive intensity. I think you saw it today. It was a lot different than it’s been. Our Texas A&M game in College Station, then look at what it was today. (Jahvon) Quinerly‘s intensity. It’s not a specific thing, but how hard do we want to play on D?” Oats asked. “When our defensive intensity is up, locked into a scouting report like we were today, we’re one of the best defenses and teams in the country.”

The Crimson Tide’s offense has taken center stage this season, but they’ve held opponents to an impressive 37.4% field goal percentage so far this season, holding their last three opponents under 65 points during the SEC Tournament.

“The last thing I’d say is can we generate enough we call margin plays? Can we win the second chance? Today I’m looking at second-chance points. We won it 14-11. Can we win the free throw deal? We didn’t today. They were 20 of 24, we were 16 of 22. Can we win the transition points. We call them margin plays. We were 17-8 today. Can we win the margin games? Can we take care of the ball, come with a defensive intensity? If we can do that, we’re going to be playing hopefully three weeks from tomorrow and having a chance to do that,” Oats said.

The details become magnified and more important during the NCAA Tournament, and it’s clear Oats will value them heading into the madness of March. The Crimson Tide currently have the second-greatest odds of winning it all, only sitting behind Houston, but even Oats knows that it won’t come easy.

“It’s not easy. You got to do it six games in a row. What I won’t say is we’ve got to shoot it well. We’ve tried to build a team that can still win when we don’t shoot it well. Can we be great on defense, rebound the ball well, take care of the ball. If we do that, even if we shoot it poorly, I think we can generate enough free throws, rim shots to win,” Oats said. “I think we’ve got a chance to win the whole thing, like you said.”

Alabama will start their journey towards a national championship Thursday at 2:45 p.m. ET when they take on the winner of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi versus Southeast Missouri State in a game airing on CBS.