Nate Oats raves about Alabama's depth after dominating despite quiet game from Brandon Miller

There is a lot of noise around the Alabama program right now, on and off the court. When looking strictly at what is happening on the court, one thing that can get overlooked is the team’s overall depth.

Not including the end of the game, the Crimson Tide went 11 deep in their lineup for its opening round 96-75 victory over Texas A&M Corpus Christi in the 2023 NCAA Tournament.

Starting forward Noah Clowney, who was in foul trouble, played just over nine minutes. But the other 10 players all played between 13 and 22 minutes as Nate Oats was able to rotate through his lineup in the blowout.

What also made Alabama’s depth performance even more impressive was that SEC Player of the Year Brandon Miller did not score a single point.

“Shows we’re deep,” Oats said of his depth scoring after the game. “We have a lot of options. A lot of talented players. You look at who is coming off our bench. Nimari Burnett is really talented. Rylan Griffen is super talented. Jaden Bradley is coming off the bench now. Two McDonald’s All-Americans with Jaen and Nimari. Nick Pringle, you see what he’s able to do. You go down the list. Dom Welch and Noah Gurley have been really good players at different schools where they came from before they got here.”

Miller finished with zero points on 0-for-5 shooting in just under 19 minutes.

Nick Pringle led the way for the entire Crimson Tide team off the bench with 19 points and 15 rebounds while shooting 8 of 10 from the field. Nimari Burnett also notched douvbe figure scoring with 11 points. SEC Co-Sixth Man of the Year Jahvon Quinerly, who started the game, had 13 points.

In total, the Alabama bench scored 49 of its 96 points, a remarkable display of the team’s depth. The extra rest the player gain from being able to rotate so much will be huge for the Crimson Tide as well heading into their second round game against Maryland.

“To have the amount of talent that you have on the bench and still have the chemistry, and guys are always ready, even if they don’t play heavy minutes,” Oats said. “That speaks more to the character of the guys on the bench. It’s great in an NCAA Tournament game we were able to get these guys. Look at the minutes of the bench: 21 minutes, 21 minutes, 21 minutes, 18 minutes. 19 minutes from Gurley and then 14 minutes. Able to get that many minutes off the bench is nice, because we got to turn around and play in less than 48 hours. Nice we were able to get that many minutes off the bench.”