Nate Oats discusses whether controversy could overshadow Brandon Miller's on-court success

Ever since police testimony revealed that Darius Miles allegedly texted Brandon Miller to bring him the gun that was used in the killing of Jamea Jonae Harris, there has been controversy surrounding Miller. Though he isn’t being charged, many feel it’s a mistake by Alabama head coach Nate Oats to continue to play the talented player.

Nate Oats was asked about Brandon Miller not winning SEC Player of the Week and if the controversy might impact his recognition going forward.

“It’s a really good question,” Oats said. “I mean, obviously he had a great week. We’re proud of the week he had, he was able to focus a lot.”

Despite having a career game against South Carolina and following that up with a good game against Arkansas, two other players earned weekly honors. They were Oscar Tshiebwe from Kentucky and Nick Smith from Arkansas

“But I think the two guys that got the awards, Oscar had a great week too. I mean, if you look, he’s the reigning Player of the Year in the country, Kentucky had a dominating win and another strong win–you kind of look to what the team does too, and we had two solid wins but our team hasn’t played as well as maybe it needed to.” Oats said.

“So, and then Nick Smith’s coming off injury and played well against Arkansas. So, here’s the deal, in our league the SEC, they’ve got to make tough decisions every week as to who gets it. So, there was great, great players that got the award.”

Nate Oats admitted that he doesn’t know how the controversy will affect Brandon Miller going forward. However, he did say that they’ll handle that as it happens.

“Brandon had a good week, I’m sure that he’ll get awards moving forward. We’ll address that as it comes up, but I don’t know the answer to the second part of your question, to be honest with you.”

Nate Oats on the mental approach down the stretch

In the final week of what has been a difficult season off the court and a successful season on the court, Nate Oats explained what the team’s mental approach needs to be.

“College basketball gets to be a long season, especially now,” Oats said.

“You can start with we had our guys on campus the last week of May. Summer school starts [and] we had a summer tour. So I think there’s an art to making sure they’re peaking in March. It’s definitely not a science, because I try to get them to peak in March every year and it doesn’t happen that way all the time. I think it’s one of those where we want to be really focused in, but we’ve got to be smart with how much time we spend on the floor. How much their bodies are. The whole mindset is, ‘we’ve got to push to the finish.'”