Nate Oats shares how win over Florida can help Alabama in March

Alabama didn’t play their best game of the year in Wednesday’s home win over Florida, but they did pull out the victory despite trialing the Gators for most of the evening.

“Honestly, we didn’t play well in a lot of areas and still found a way to win against a good team,” head coach Nate Oats commented of the Crimson Tide after the win. “Like, if we get in a tough game in the tournament, you know, we’re going to reference these ones.”

He’s referencing this game and chiefly another win vs. Georgia earlier in the season where Alabama needed a late rally to come back and earn that win.

“We’re down a lot bigger against Georgia on the road, figured out a way to win. Down 10 (vs. Florida) with eight minutes left and figure out a way to get enough stops you know and get to overtime and have enough grit and determination to build seven-point lead,” Oats said. “Now, we got to do a better job once we build that seven-point lead in overtime of pulling away and winning it by 10-12, not making it a one-point game.”

Either way, those are both wins where Alabama had to find some real backbone in order to pull off. Per Oats, those results ought to be confidence-builders going forward.

“We can reference these comebacks that we’ve had. You know, it’s hard to win six straight games in March. It’s not that easy to win three straight games against really good teams in the tournament,” Oats said. “So when when we get down, if we get down in one of those SEC Tournament games or NCAA Tournament games, you reference these games where we’ve been down and came back and win — give them some belief, some hope.”

Case in point: Nate Oats says that remembering back to the Georgia win helped Alabama keep their heads steady in order to pull off another comeback Wednesday.

“I thought the Georgia win helped us in the huddles tonight,” Oats said. “Like, ‘we’re going to win this game, we’ve done it before, we know we can do it, here’s what we got to do.'”

A very dangerous Alabama squad is looking more and more like the SEC champs with performances like last night. They can obviously blow teams out when they’re hot, but the Tide have also proved capable of duking it out in a tight one.