Nate Oats on underdog mentality vs. UConn: ‘Nobody’s going to pick us to win’

Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats knows the Crimson Tide are underdogs against UConn. The Final Four is the first for the Alabama men.

Meanwhile, UConn’s been a juggernaut under Dan Hurley for two years, winning last year’s national title and the overwhelming favorite to do so this year. So what can the Crimson Tide do?

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Well, play free and loose and see what happens according to Oats.

“Nobody’s gonna pick us to win,” Oats said. “We’re kind of playing with house money a little bit, if you will. We weren’t supposed to beat Clemson. We weren’t supposed to beat North Carolina. A lot of people were picking against us against Grand Canyon. 

“… We’re not gonna be picked to win, I know that, but sometimes the best team, the one that’s picked, doesn’t always win. We were the underdog against Carolina – not as big as we are now – but we figured out a way to win. I don’t think our guys are gonna relax to the point where they’re not gonna play hard and be ready to play. We played hard these last four games.”

Perhaps it’s a mental thing. Oats certainly likes to play mind games here against someone like Hurley.

If you can put all of the pressure on the favorite, perhaps it does give Alabama an advantage in that regard.

“We’re gonna go in playing as hard as we can, but there’s not gonna be a ton of pressure on us,” Oats said. “We made the school’s first Final Four, we’re gonna enjoy the fact that we’re there, that there’s only four teams playing, the entire world … watching the Final Four. It’s great. But we’re gonna try to win. Every game we play, we’re gonna try to win it.”

Oats is used to this type of moniker around the team. Alabama wasn’t picked to go this far, by most anyway.

“But for a team picked fifth, and really — we haven’t been healthy for a while,” Oats said after the Elite Eight win. “Like the last time we were fully healthy we beat Texas A&M, who has a really good team. Shoot, they almost beat Houston when Houston was healthy. We beat them by 25.

“This turned out to be a pretty good team when we were healthy. For us to win these two games to go to a Final Four without Wrightsell, who was playing unbelievably well, as good as any guard we have, shows a lot about the character of the team. And Wrightsell was as good of an assistant coach as we had on the bench these last two games. He’s been great.”