Nate Oats reveals message to Alabama prior to upset win over Baylor

Entering Saturday’s game against Baylor, Alabama had lost four of its last six games. The Crimson Tide even fell to Georgia their last time out on Tuesday. But on Saturday, it was a different story, as Alabama walked away with an 87-78 victory over Baylor.

The win was Alabama’s 14th of the season, improving to 14-7 overall. Prior to the upset victory, Alabama head coach Nate Oats had a very simple message to his players, and it seems to have come to fruition against Baylor.

“I told our guys before the game, we needed to get back to having fun,” Oats said, via Mike Rodak, of his message to his Alabama players prior to Saturday’s upset over Baylor. “This is why you started playing basketball when you were a kid.

“That was a lot of fun.”

Alabama led by as many as 15 points over Baylor. Baylor’s largest lead was two points. The Crimson Tide led 38-34 at halftime, and played even better in the second half, outscoring Baylor 49-44. Alabama also shot at a high level, making 59.2 percent of its field goal attempts. Baylor shot 46.4 percent, and the Bears had the edge by shooting 47.4 percent from three-point range compared to 33.3 percent for Alabama.

Coming into Alabama-Baylor, Oats knew a second half improvement was necessary

In the days leading up to the showdown between Alabama and Baylor, Oats joined the Paul Finebaum Show, where he discussed Alabama’s recent struggles. Oats acknowledged Alabama’s second half struggles, and pointed them out as a major point of emphasis moving forward.

“We lost at Mississippi State, they had nine offensive rebounds with eight minutes to go in the game,” Oats said. “They finished the game with 18 offensive boards. So there’s things that we do at a pretty high level or pretty good, and then we just, as the game moves on later in the game, we start to lose our focus, lose our attention to detail and we get bad. And those are two of the worst we do defensively. We foul too much and we give up too many O-boards. We’re trying to fix that.”

Oats also knew that a lot of Alabama’s struggles were coming from self-inflicted wounds. He was hoping that things would improve against Baylor, and they certainly did.

“It seems most of our damage is we’re doing it to ourself,” said Oats. There’s a lot that goes into coaching and analytics are part of it. Psychology is part of it. I think psychology is a little more important at this stage for us right now.”