Nate Oats reveals how Alabama is learning from Georgia loss

Alabama (13-7) dropped their game against Georgia (6-14) 82-76 Tuesday night ahead of their Big 12/SEC Challenge against No. 4 Baylor Saturday afternoon.

When you’re gearing up to play the reigning national champions, the last thing you want to do is drop the game prior, especially to a team that was still searching for their their first conference win.

Alabama was a top-10 team in the preseason rankings and have since earned a streaky reputation. Alabama (4-4, SEC) has split their eight conference games and sit dead in the middle of their conference standings. They’re now 2-4 in their last six and head coach Nate Oats joined the Paul Finebaum Show to discuss having to take a different approach to how he addresses his players after losses.

“I’m done talking after these losses. I need to hear what you guys think the problem is,” Oats said to his team after the Georgia loss. “… We got some stuff out, guys shared what their opinions were, you know, saying it after games is one thing, doing it [is another].”

The biggest thing Oats believes needs to be addressed is how to get his player’s confidence back. It starts with their effort every single game, but that’s on the athletes on the floor, you can’t coach effort.

“I can’t control everything,” Oats said. “… When we win big, I really try not to take a ton of credit because it’s the player’s season, it’s the players that are doing the playing and winning. When we’re losing, I’m gonna do everything I can to help fix it, but at some point we’ve got to put it in the players hands and it’s your season.”

The first step in taking your season back will come by defeating Baylor at home. The win would get Alabama right back on track to grab a decent seed in the NCAA Tournament. Last season, this wasn’t a problem, the Crimson Tide ran away with the SEC regular season title.

“Last year we had really good players that bought into the right stuff and played the right way,” Oats said. “I think we have at times this year, we just got to get more consistent at it.

I’ve been doing this 23 years, I’m gonna do it again next year,” he said. “Like, it’s the last time you guys are together. Some of you, it’s the last time you’ll ever play college basketball. It’s a big deal. Like you got to determine how you want the season to go and it’s really a lot more in the a player’s hands win or lose.”