Nate Oats doesn’t believe Alabama shows necessary toughness to compete for championship

After an 85-77 loss on their home court vs. Clemson in the ACC-SEC challenge, Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats was brutally honest about his team’s lack of toughness.

After the rebounding and defensive performance put on by the Crimson Tide, Oats came out in the postgame presser and was very down on his team, eventually declaring that they don’t currently have the toughness required to win another SEC Championship. His gripes began with the lack of focus on D.

“Look, on the defensive end, you know, we kept getting ducked. On, the offensive end, I did think some guys showed some toughness and different guys showed it at various times. I mean, like, some of our guys that we know can be tough and some plays where they were not tough, you know. So you got to do it for 40 minutes.”

Oats also pointed out that Alabama were not the aggressors on offense either. They struggled finishing against the Tigers’ physicality inside and certainly had trouble with it in the battle on the glass.

“I mean, if you look at our at-the-rim finishing, I mean, we’re 10-of-24. We didn’t finish at the rim. I thought their physicality kind of got to us a little bit, and then on the defensive end, giving up the duck-ins.

“And (Ian) Shieffelin had 14 rebounds. Our bigs got to do a better job rebounding the ball. (Grant Nelson) ends up with eight, you know, this definitely wasn’t one of his better nights, he didn’t finish well. And he’s our leading rebounder with eight. We got to get some more guys that rebound the ball a little bit better.”

Even though the rebounding tally ended up even, raw numbers don’t always tell the full story. Oats did credit his guards for rebounding well, but from his perspective, the Tide gave up way too many chances on the boards.

“I mean, ends up even on the glass, a lot of that because our guards rebound the ball so well and we got pretty even rebounding. But they they got a big that dominated the glass, two really, 14 and eight between Shieffelin and (PJ) Hall.”

Oats then said of his group: “So we’re definitely not tough enough to be competing for an SEC Championship right now, that’s for sure.”

That may be the case now, but Nate Oats is dedicated to fixing the problems in the aforementioned departments. The Crimson Tide players can get ready to learn some defense.

“I can assure you, until we figure it out, practices week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, most of our time, is going to be about 90% on the defensive end. Our offense has enough Firepower and we’ll make enough tweaks to get where our offense needs to be. We got to get some defensive-minded guys that can play for 40 minutes on the defensive end.”