Nate Oats assesses Alabama's defense against Texas A&M

Nate Oats was pleased and not pleased with Alabama’s defense against Texas A&M. The Crimson Tide came away victorious 100-75 over the Aggies Saturday afternoon.

On one hand, Alabama’s defense was good enough to ensure a 25-point win. But on the other, the Crimson Tide gave up 25 points.

Oats explained postgame why there was a Jekyll and Hyde feeling.

“They’re a hard one because you could be really good at a lot of things on defense and still not be great because you gave up so many O boards,” Oats said. “So we were definitely improved, not to the level I’d like to see us. Our analytics had us at a 1.04 and they had 75 pounds on 72 possessions. So not where we needed to be, but we were able to beat pretty good team by 25. 

“I thought (Mark) Sears was better. I think his effort – he won the blue-collar and won the Hard Hat. I thought his effort was a lot better. We said there’s lots of things that we still need to get better at. We’re gonna keep working at it. I think it was good that we played A&M before Florida because Florida is another good offensive-rebounding team, and so we’re gonna have to be really good on the glass. We were better, nowhere close to where I’d like to see us, but trending in the right direction.”

The SEC race is a tough one. So at this point, every win counts for Oats and Alabama while in conference.

“That’s a big win,” Oats said. “We’ve got teams right on our team in the SEC race. We’ve got to protect home floor, so we need to get it. We didn’t do a great job on the defensive glass. They were the No. 1 offensive rebounding team in the country. What did they end up with, 52 percent of their misses. Not great by us, but I did tell the team – I gave them three things. One, we’ve got to turn them over so they don’t get shots up. We were OK. We turned them over 14 times, probably not quite enough. Two, we’ve got to actually box out and rebound. We weren’t great on that … 

Two totally different styles, but we were fortunate we got them at home and shot the ball pretty well and got the win because it was a well-needed win at this point in the year.”