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Alabama

Rylan Griffen responds to Alabama's blowout loss vs. Oklahoma: Thought we were untouchable

ns_headshot_2024-clearby:Nick Schultz•01/28/23•

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rylan griffen
(Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

Earlier this week, Alabama held on to defeat Mississippi State despite a rough night on offense. But Nate Oats didn’t see much good despite the victory.

“Hopefully, this is a little bit of a wake-up call. … We made enough tough plays to get the win, but we’ve got a lot of work to do before we play Oklahoma Saturday,” Oats said on the SEC Now postgame show.

Saturday, the Crimson Tide saw the problems catch up in a 93-69 blowout loss to Oklahoma as part of the SEC/Big 12 Challenge. All week, Oats kept talking about the need for his team to play much better than it did against Mississippi State to avoid a situation like the one that unfolded at the Lloyd Noble Center.

Rylan Griffen said Oats maintained that message in the locker room, and he admitted the coach issued a warning about a bad game coming.

“Coach Oats, he’s been on us recently. He’s been telling us that something like this was due to happen,” Griffen said. “We didn’t really listen. We didn’t really come out ready to fight. The locker room, we just focused on getting better. There was a point where you could kind of feel it that we thought we were kind of untouchable. … Coach Oats has been warning us about something like this happening. Now that we see that, we need to come back out with an edge on our shoulder and start the games off better.”

Even this week before the game, Oats acknowledged the need to get better and said despite the victory over Mississippi State — which moved the Crimson Tide to a perfect 8-0 in SEC play. He knew Alabama needed to play better against Oklahoma, and the Sooners came out firing and didn’t look back.

“We had gotten better up until the last game,” Oats said. “I thought we took a big dive last game. We’ve got to flip this thing around and make a big jump forward this next game because I felt like we went backwards last game.”

As a team, Oklahoma shot 56.7% from the field, including a 9-for-12 showing from three-point distance, to cruise to the victory. Alabama, meanwhile, was stymied by the Sooners defense as it shot just 37.9% from the floor and 27.3% from downtown.