Nate Oats addresses point disparity inside against Auburn

In a rematch between two of the best in the Southeastern Conference from earlier this season, Auburn got the better of Alabama the second time around. That’s because, unlike most games regarding the Crimson Tide, the Tigers were the ones that had the offensive outburst of almost 100.

Nate Oats assessed where their points were coming from following the 99-81 loss inside Neville Arena last night. He said that, coming into the game, they were trying to take away threes from them in how they were defending. Unfortunately, though, Auburn approached the game in a different way offensively.

“I mean, look, you know? We didn’t want to double. I saw other teams that doubled gave up a bunch of threes to them,” said Oats. “In hindsight, as bad as we lost? Maybe we should have doubled more and then try to rotate around and try to take the three away. They only hit five threes tonight.”

The real issue ended up being their work inside and, as such, their ensuing trips to the charity stripe. They beat them up on the inside and generated most of their scoring that way instead.

“The problem is they went to the free-throw line 50 times and shot 40 out of 50 free throws,” said Oats.

“Their bigs? 9-for-10, 9-for-11 between their starting four and five in (Jaylin) Williams and (Johni) Broome. And they’re both good. They may have the best frontcourt, when you look at the four and the five, in the league,” Oats said. “We didn’t do a very good job with it. Part of it is we started small and they punished us. We’ve got to have a better answer for it if we’re going to continue to start small like that.”

Williams (26) and Broome (24) combined for 50 of the near triple-digit output against ‘Bama while also accounting for 13 rebounds, seven blocks, and three steals total. As Oats noted, though, almost none of their point production came from distance. They combined to shoot 15-29 (51.7%) and 18-21 (85.7%) while only going 2-7 (28.6%) from three.

That discrepancy was present throughout the rotation for Auburn versus the Tide. They scored 40 points down low as a team and 40 more from the free-throw line on an 80% clip. Meanwhile, they scored just 15 from three at 26.3%.

For reference, the Tigers had a similar attack with their numbers from the paint and inefficiency from three. It’s just that the amount from the free-throw line was nearly three times less than what it was on Wednesday.

Oats went one way and Auburn took advantage of the other. That aspect was much of the reason that the Tide their second-most lopsided loss of the season on The Plains.