Nate Oats rips Alabama offense after close victory over Mississippi State

It wasn’t easy, but Alabama remained undefeated in SEC play with a 66-63 victory over Mississippi State Wednesday night. Based on Nate Oats’ postgame interview, though, it would’ve been tough to tell the Crimson Tide won the game.

Alabama struggled mightily on offense, shooting 36.8% from the field and just 17.9% from three-point territory. However, the Crimson Tide made some big plays on defense, forcing 15 Bulldogs turnovers and holding them to 27 points in the second half.

Considering a majority of his team’s scoring comes from freshmen, Oats has to make sure his players are focused. He didn’t mince words about his team’s performance even despite the victory.

“We probably should’ve lost the game, to be honest with you,” Oats told the SEC Now crew. “I keep telling them, ‘We’ve got to get better. We’ve got to be better against this team than we were the last time.’ We weren’t tonight. Hopefully, this is a little bit of a wake-up call. Mississippi State’s a tough team, man.

“We didn’t win this game on offense. Our offense was terrible. We couldn’t shoot it from three. We out-rebounded them by three. So I thought our defense was great, especially in the second half. We ended up out-rebounding a tough rebounding team. So we made enough tough plays to get the win, but we’ve got a lot of work to do before we play Oklahoma Saturday.”

Mississippi State made some early adjustments in the first half and that threw the Alabama offense out of sync. However, the defense stepped up when it mattered — and Oats said that was the difference.

“We started to get some stops and play harder in the second half,” Oats told the SEC Now crew after the game. “That three Rylan Griffen hit in the corner was big. We had a few big plays in the second half. It really came down to our defense. But you’ve got to give Mississippi State tons of credit. They came in, they played harder than us in the first half, they had a better plan. We couldn’t figure out how to score on them. They played great. Got to give them a ton of credit. We didn’t play very well tonight.”

Nate Oats on what he learned about this Alabama team: ‘Guys don’t quit’

Oats credited his team for being resilient and pulling out the victory even after it came down to the final possession. He said that speaks to the players’ mentality and how they don’t stop playing hard even if they’re not playing hard.

After all, Alabama’s two leading scorers — Mark Sears and Brandon Miller — combined to shoot 6-for-16 from the floor.

“I think we’re a team that figures out ways to win,” Oats said. “Guys don’t quit. They keep playing hard. Sears struggled to score. Brandon, they didn’t give him any shots. Those are our two leading scorers. They did a great job on both those guys. They still kept playing hard. I thought they made some big defensive plays. Brandon had some big offensive rebounds.

“We just couldn’t make shots. We didn’t do a very good job attacking them in the first half. They switched us and we weren’t good at it. We’ll get better. Hopefully, this is a little bit of a wake-up call and we’ll come back, regroup and play a lot better on Saturday.”