Nate Oats reveals how Alabama overcame poor shooting from Brandon Miller

You have to give credit where credit is due and Alabama earned a ton of credit this weekend. That’s because, after going down as much as 15 on the road against the top-ranked team in the country, the Crimson Tide came back and pulled out a 71-65 victory over Houston. It’s even more impressive considering the struggles of star freshman Brandon Miller yesterday. In the end, though, Nate Oats believes it was actually a positive for his team.

Oats talked about overcoming Miller’s 0-8 night from the field during his postgame press conference. He said the performance by the rest of their team was necessary because, although Miller is incredibly skilled, he’s still too young for the program to place all the pressure upon his shoulders.

“We’ve got a lot of players,” said Oats. “Obviously Brandon’s talented. He’s really good. He’s a 6’9 guard that can do a lot. But, for a freshman that’s never played college basketball before, you can’t expect him to be Superman every night. We’ve got to get production from lots of guys.”

Miller came in averaging 19.1 points per game. He had yet to score single-digit points over his first eight career college games. That streak ended yesterday, though, as he scored just eight points on only free throws. He played 31 minutes and picked up five rebounds and two steals, but it was still the ‘worst’ performance of the young freshman’s career so far.

However, Alabama was able to overcome it with a team effort. Noah Clowney chipped in a double-double of 16 points and 11 rebounds, Jaden Bradley came off the bench to put up 12 points, five rebounds, and four assists, and transfer guard Mark Sears was big with 12 points including a big three with just over three minutes left to officially give the Tide the lead they wouldn’t relinquish again.

Oats says Saturday’s win was the perfect showcase of Alabama’s depth. Whether they’d struggled yesterday or throughout this season, he was proud of how several of his players rose to the moment when their team needed it most.

“Lots of guys stepped up at different points. And I think it shows our depth…I thought there’s plenty of guys that played hard, played well,” Oats said. “Some guys that struggled through the course of the game stepped up late when we needed them to. So it shows a lot about them.”

As Miller grows, Alabama will continue to ask him to take on more and more of their load. It just didn’t come together yesterday for the former five-star freshman. Still, the Tide found a way to win because of their top-to-bottom talent, which is all that matters as they’ll now return to Tuscaloosa with their second win over a No. 1 team in this young season.