Nate Oats reveals Alabama's messaging, preparation amid ongoing murder investigation

The day leading up to Alabama’s game with South Carolina took quite a turn when police testimony linked star forward Brandon Miller to last month’s shooting which involved former Crimson Tide player Darius Miles. It seemed similar to the days leading up to the Jan. 17 game against Vanderbilt, and Nate Oats said the team talked about those parallels — although, not too much.

In that game against the Commodores, just two days after Miles was arrested on capital murder charges, Miller had 30 points to lead Alabama to the 78-66 victory. He had another big performance amid the latest revelation against South Carolina, putting up a career-high 41 points and hitting the game-winning shot in overtime.

However, the rest of the team struggled. Oats didn’t want to use the investigation as an excuse, though.

“We’ve referenced it a little bit,” Oats said of the days leading up to the Vanderbilt game. “We’ve been in tough situations with things that can be a distraction. … I thought he played pretty well at Vandy. Let’s come out and do it again. Again, maybe it’s just coincidental that some of these guys struggled. I don’t know. I don’t want to make excuses for anybody who’s struggling. We’ve got to play better on Saturday. But, yeah, we referenced it a little bit. Not a whole lot.

“To be honest with you, our main focus was on the scout. We tried to keep things as normal as possible. The South Carolina scout was our main focus and 95% of what we spent time with the team on. I thought we prepared the guys well. They did a good job. We didn’t make shots. You’re going to have some of those nights. You don’t shot the ball well, the opponent — they shot 43% from three, they made some tough ones. They made a half-court shot, they made end-of-buzzer shot, end-of-shot clock shots. They made some real tough threes. We had some wide open ones and missed them. It’s going to happen like that, and for your team to still figure out how to get a win, I think it shows a ton of character about your guys. I was proud of how they performed tonight.”