Nate Oats accepts responsibility for Oklahoma loss

The Oklahoma Sooners men’s basketball squad stunned the college basketball world on Saturday in the SEC/ Big 12 challenge. Oklahoma defeated the No. 2 team in the nation, the Alabama Crimson Tide, in convincing fashion. And while everyone else was shocked by the outcome, it appears as if the Crimson Tide’s head coach Nate Oats is not one of those individuals.

During the postgame press conference discussed Alabama’s loss to Oklahoma while accepting responsibility for his team’s poor play.

“I still knew Oklahoma was a really good team. And if we didn’t come ready to play, it wasn’t going go well for us,” said Oats. “I didn’t do a good enough job getting these guys ready to play. I gotta figure out a better way to let these guys know what we gotta do and getting motivated to play a little harder, a little better on defense. We gotta figure it out a little better. That falls back on me as a head coach.”

If you had no prior knowledge of the teams before they took the court, you might believe Oklahoma was the ranked team in this contest. The Sooners started the first half on fire, outscoring the Crimson Tide 50 to 33 in the first period. And in the second half, Oklahoma refused to let up, dropping 43 points to Alabama’s 36. Oklahoma went on to win the game convincingly with a 24-point victory, 93- 69.

Oats addresses team’s focus in loss to Oklahoma

Although Alabama got a win earlier this week, Nate Oats still saw things his team needed to improve on heading into Saturday’s game against Oklahoma. He hoped the Crimson Tide would learn from those problems that plagued them against Mississippi State with the SEC/Big 12 Challenge approaching.

Instead, Alabama fell to the Sooners 93-69 at the Lloyd Noble Center. The Sooners had strong day on both ends of the floor while the Crimson Tide had no answer. Oats pointed to a few different factors, but it came down to one thing.

Even in a win, he wants his players to learn from mistakes.

“One, we’re on the road, so you didn’t have energy behind the crowd to get you into it,” Oats said. “But if you’re relying on crowd energy to get you in, you’re playing for the wrong reasons. Two, I think we got away with it a little bit last game.

“We were still able to sneak out a win [against Mississippi State] even when we didn’t come out ready to go, so trying to tell our guys mature teams learn from a win. We obviously weren’t mature enough to learn from a win. Hopefully, a loss, it’ll help us wake up a little bit.”