Nate Oats shares importance of Alabama having experience in close games

Alabama‘s 103-88 victory over Ole Miss on Wednesday wasn’t always as lopsided as the final score may indicate.

In fact, the Rebels led the Crimson Tide by as many as 14 points during the first half. A swift 10-point swing in Alabama’s favor cut the lead to three points by halftime, and went on to outscore Ole Miss 64-46 during the final stretch.

“That was with our awful start,” head coach Nate Oats said postgame. “So at any point, [I know that] we can go on a 10-0 run in a short amount of time. We just need to sit down, get stops, and we can make some runs. I think we’ve done it. We weren’t down late. We were doing a lot bigger late against Georgia, but we were down 10 with about nine minutes to go against Florida not that long ago. So we’ve been down.”

The common denominator in all three of those wins — the Crimson Tide went on to win all by comfortable margins. Oats’ team has its back constantly put against the wall and time after time seem to prevail, and is why they would win a share of the SEC regular season championship with Tennessee if the season ended today.

Of course, that’s not the case and there’s still a lot of basketball to be played over the next 10 days. Still, the two leaders in the current conference standings are set to clash on Saturday in Tuscaloosa. Before Alabama gets there, however, Oats has a few things he wants his team to clean up.

“Obviously, our defense hasn’t been great. It was a lot better tonight for that middle 20 minutes,” Oats continued. “We need it to be much better for the whole 40 on Saturday. … But we can see that we can do this. Obviously, Tennessee is a little bit better offensive team. We’re gonna have to be much better, but we can do it. We’re just gonna have to come out and really guard.

“But if we do get down, we can get some stops, our offense can get us back in any game as long as our defense can start to get some stops.”

The opening tip between the Crimson Tide and Vols is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET live on ESPN. ESPN’s matchup predictor gives Alabama a 63.6 percent chance of winning Saturday’s matchup. Meanwhile, KenPom expects a final score of 85-83 in Tennessee’s favor. The line in Vegas has yet to be released.