Nate Oats reveals why he made change to Alabama starting lineup

Nate Oats wasn’t a fan of how his starting lineup had recently performed, so he changed things up and went smaller for most of Alabama’s win vs. LSU on Saturday.

Oats rolled out a starting lineup that basically featured four guards and one forward in Grant Nelson. He and two guards, Aaron Estrada and Mark Sears, have started every game of the season, while the other spots have rotated a bit. Against LSU, he went with 6’5 wing Rylan Griffen and 6’3 guard Latrell Wrightsell to counter a Tiger front-court that features two guys 6’10 or taller.

The changes seem to work to some extent as ‘Bama actually jumped out to an early 15-10 lead in the first segment after they had fallen behind at the beginning of some other games. LSU only held a lead a couple of times in the first half as a whole and never led by more than two points before Alabama ran away with the game using the same lineup in the start of the second half.

“We needed to make a change to the starting lineup. Our starts had been disastrous, like the start of the first half and the start of the second half, game after game after game,” Oats explained of his decision to switch around the lineup.

“I kind of kept warning those guys. So we made a change. I thought (Latrell Wrightsell) has been good in the lineup. I thought Rylan (Griffen) came off the bench but played great. I thought those four guards were kind of playing our best. Grant (Nelson) has been playing well. We just put the guys that have been playing best in.”

The Sears-Estrada-Wrighstell-Griffen-Nelson five-some worked quite well, at least in this matchup. That’s why Nate Oats opted not to use his bench very much in the game.

Senior forward Nick Pringle had started five of six conference games for the Crimson Tide but didn’t see action in the first half as Alabama opted to go small. But he did come in to give valuable minutes in the final 20 minutes, per Oats.

“I played the guys we felt like gave us the best chance to win the game at the appropriate times in the game. So Nick (Pringle) gave us some pretty good minutes in the second half. But I played guys I thought gave us the best chance to win, and it worked out pretty well tonight.”

You’d think Nate Oats will stick with the lineup that worked so well — especially on offense — vs. LSU going forward, but only time will tell.