Nate Oats heaps praise on Rylan Griffen following win at Auburn

Alabama coach Nate Oats knows the Crimson Tide couldn’t have beaten Auburn on Saturday without Rylan Griffen. The freshman was huge off the bench in a 77-69 win, leading the team with 16 points and also coming away with a pair of blocks.

In his postgame press conference, Oats praised Griffen for his impact in multiple areas, particular the defense he played on Tigers guard Wendell Green.

“Rylan was huge, we don’t win this game without Rylan,” Oats said. “I really feel like he did the best job defensively on Wendell Green. Wendell Green, he can go get buckets as good as anybody in the country can. I thought he was hurting (Mark) Sears and Jaden Bradley a bit, so we went with more size and put Rylan on him and he had that one block. We tried to send him downhill to our bigs a little more but he’s good. He may be the best guard we’ve seen all year.”

Green still managed 24 points on 7-of-19 shooting to lead all scorers, but missed a couple of key baskets late as Griffen made him work. The No. 45 prospect in the 2022 class according to On3 Consensus, Griffen has made an immediate impact this season to average 6.9 points across 16.1 minutes per game.

It wasn’t just Rylan Griffen that made an impact off the bench Saturday, though. The Crimson Tide got 25 points from their bench, which was huge on a day that leading scorer Brandon Miller finished with just 13 points on 5-of-12 shooting. Oats noted the impact that the “blue collar” plays made by Nimari Burnett had on the outcome.

“I thought Nimari — Nimari didn’t shoot it well either — but he led us in blue collar points,” the coach said, “Made some effort plays But not necessarily even the bench, but Jaden Bradley was big there when we made a run late to get the scoring out of him that we got. Brandon (Miller) found other ways to impact the game. He’s still in double figures with 13 to end the game. He got to the O-boards. He had that tip in that was big late after he got burned on the backdoor.”

With the win, Alabama remains undefeated in SEC play and appears headed toward a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Crimson Tide will hope to keep things rolling when they face a big road test against No. 6 Tennessee on Wednesday.