Nate Oats shares thoughts on opposing teams trying zone defense

Georgia head coach Mike White made a grave mistake on Saturday against Alabama when he decided to open up in a zone against the Tide, who can get as hot as anyone from beyond the arc. Ooh boy, did they ever against the Dawgs.

Mark Sears splashed a 3-pointer 14 seconds into the game. Then, on Alabama’s next two possessions, freshman phenom Brandon Miller — a superb zone-breaker at 6-9 with a terrific shooting stroke — made a pair of triples. On the Tide’s fourth offensive possession of the game, Georgia actually contested Miller’s 3-point shot but fouled him and sent him to the free throw line, where he knocked down all three free throws. Alabama finally missed a shot on their fifth possession but responded with back-to-back 3s by Sears to make it 18-6 less than four minutes into the game. Timeout Georgia.

A lot of teams have been hopeless against this Alabama team when they get hot, but few coaches were brave enough to dare the Tide to launch from deep. Mike White made that gamble by playing a zone and was burned catastrophically. Alabama scored 12 points on their first four possessions — three points each time down. Then, after one miss, they hit two more triples to make it 18 points on seven possessions — which is 2.57 points per possession. Just a ridiculously stupid number from an efficiency standpoint. Most teams could take wide open threes every single possession and not come close to that mark.

Suffice to say: the zone failed impressively. After the game, Nate Oats was asked if he was “licking his chops” when Georgia opened up in zone. Of course he was, and the Alabama head coach said what we all saw: the Tide have no problems breaking a zone.

“We haven’t really had much issue with zones,” said Oats. “When you’ve got one of the best shooters in the country at 6-9, if they’re gonna try to zone and let him get freed up, that usually works to our advantage. It has about every time we’ve seen it with as well as we shoot it.”

Unlike Mike White, says Nate Oats, most coaches opt not to coax ‘Bama into shooting more threes by playing a zone.

“Most coaches are a lot more reluctant to let Sears or Brandon or Nimari (Burnett) or (Jahvon) Quinerly or Rylan (Griffen), whoever, go down the list, free for a three. But teams also have a hard time guarding us man sometimes because we can get in the paint and then you force help and you’re giving up layups or threes. So the zone, someways, makes sense.”

Clearly, the Alabama coach had his guys well-prepared for such a defense.

“But I think we’ve done a pretty good job handling it. It was great the way we handled it tonight. And Texas A&M’s only a game behind us. You watch the way they play D, they’re gonna switch it up – man, zone, different types of zone, all kinds of stuff. So we’ve gotta stay aggressive against no matter what type of zone we’re gonna see.”

Nate Oats won’t expect such an easy time on offense in the team’s finale game against second-place Texas A&M next weekend. If Buzz Williams paid any attention to this contest, it’s safe to assume he won’t be won’t play a lick of zone.