Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 107-79 win over Oklahoma

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – No. 5 Alabama defeated No. 12 Oklahoma, 107-79, on Saturday night at Coleman Coliseum. After the Crimson Tide’s SEC opener, head coach Nate Oats spoke to local reporters. Here is everything Oats said following Alabama advanced to 12-2 (1-0 SEC).

Oats opening statement…

“Before we get started, I was informed a happy birthday was in order. Charlie Potter’s 25th birthday, is that right? Happy birthday, Charlie. (Thank you, Coach.) Welcome to the New Year.

“I thought our guys were pretty locked in tonight. I thought the start was good, the first half. I think we had them at a 0.76 on the defensive side in the first half. I thought to start the game, we were really locked into the defensive end. Fears, I think, only had one point at the half. He’s been their leading scorer, so I thought our guys were ready to go on him. Obviously, picking up a couple fouls in the first half and him sitting helped, too. Defensively, we were much better, and it fell off a little bit in the second half when we got a lead. That’s one thing we got to work on, is playing with an edge when we get a lead. 

“But offensively, getting to the O boards, getting 22 out of the 40 available rebounds on our offensive end is pretty solid. Our offensive rebounding rate was 55 percent tonight. So we’ve been stressing that. I thought we took advantage of some of their smaller guards on the offensive boards. Youngblood kind of a two to three, got four of them. Sears ended up with two. Labaron had two O boards. So it wasn’t just our bigs getting in there. I thought our guards got in there and mixed it up pretty good. 

“Offensively, we didn’t turn it over much. We had nine, one of them being Mo D’s flagrant that gave them the ball back and one being a shot clock violation. So there wasn’t a lot of live ball turnovers. So when you don’t turn it over and you get 55 percent of your misses, your efficiency numbers will be up. And we didn’t shoot very well. We didn’t shoot great at the free-throw line. I mean, it was OK. We didn’t shoot great from three. We still ended up at a 1.39 for the night. So we’re finding other ways to do it. Hopefully, our shooting will come around and we’ll start shooting a little bit better. But we’re getting to the free-throw line, we’re generating shots off O boards, getting out in transition a little bit, and it’s been pretty good. 

“Mark, double-double with 10 assists. I thought he really had the ball moving. You can see his his energy when his teammates were scoring, which is great. We need that out of him. He was more excited about getting 10 assists. I mean, I think you saw when he hit Holloway for the one three, that was his ninth, and he was all fired up. And he got Jarin on the roll for his 10th. So I was happy to see that. We talk about Mudita – vicarious joy through others success. Well, Mark was really happy for his teammates’ scoring, particularly off his passes tonight. I thought it was good. 

“A lot of positives. We’re in the middle of SEC – I shouldn’t say in the middle of it. We’re in it now. We’re in SEC play. Lot of stuff to clean up, but lot of positives on our first game. I think our non-conference schedule prepared us for these games. Now, we got to go on the road where we’ve been a little inconsistent. We lost at Purdue and didn’t play well in North Dakota. We had a big road win at North Carolina. But we got to go on a road to South Carolina, who’s going to be really amped up and ready to go, I’m sure, after their game today. 

“But really good for us to start our first game – in the two years we’ve won the SEC regular season, I think we won by 22 at home and 18 on the road. I talked to our guys, like we need a dominating win coming out to set the tone if we’re trying to win this thing, and I think the guys answered the bell pretty well.”

Oats on the biggest thing he learned from the non-conference schedule….

“We’re capable of being a great defensive team. We got to be better when the score is our way, and we’ve got to be more consistent. We’re not as good a shooting team as we had hoped, but some of that’s injuries. Obviously, Wrightsell was our most efficient shooter. He’s out for the year. Youngblood is still coming off the injury. He just hasn’t really got in the flow. So we’re having to find other ways to do it. But I think Dioubate is playing a bigger role, because he gets to the O boards really well. Grant Nelson getting the O boards. Grant had a double-double tonight with 12 and 11. So we’ve just kind of figured ourselves out some. I still think there’s a lot of chemistry that has to be figured out because some of these guys haven’t played that well together. I shouldn’t say that well. They haven’t played that much together. So we’re still figuring some of our chemistry stuff out. But I think our offensive rebounding and our ability to get to the free-throw line has been big for this team.”

Oats on how much Sears’ assists can help moving forward…

“I think it’ll be good because we got some guys that need guys that generate offense for them a little bit. They’re going to play off close-outs or play off catch and shoots. And hopefully, him moving the ball like he did, maybe we can get some of the other shooters going, whether it’s Youngblood, Holloway, who’s more than capable of knocking down shots. Labaron was 2-of-5 tonight. If we get Jarin going, if Mark keeps moving it like that – he’s so aggressive downhill that you kind of have to help because it’s hard for a lot of guys in this league to guard him one-on-one without fouling. So then you bring the help in, well he keeps moving the ball like he did tonight, I think he can make it a lot easier on some of our other guys to get some easy buckets.”

Oats on the defensive performance, especially early on Jeremiah Fears…

“The first 20 minutes was as good as we’ve played. 0.76 against a team like Oklahoma, top 12 in the country. I think it showed what we’re capable of, but we’ve had this issue this year, and it’s a little bit of human nature, but we got to fight it. The second half wasn’t very good. We were 1.28 in the second half, so that we ended up at a 1.03 in the game, which isn’t where we want to be. We need to be down in the low nines if we’re trying to have a dominant defense. So I thought it was great for 20 minutes, and not very good at all for the last 20.”

Oats on how important was Alabama’s length on both ends of the floor…

“I thought it was most evident on the offensive end on the glass. I did think we forced them into some tough shots, maybe challenging threes with our length. But because they were team that had been shooting 37 percent from three, and they only shot 26 tonight, maybe our length bother him and from the 3-point line. They shot it pretty well from the field, but man, we gave up some just dumb, like just wide-open layups, whether it’s transition, where we kind of gambled and went for a loose ball we didn’t get off a turnover or just our pick-and-roll coverage wasn’t great at times. Godwin ended up getting some easy plays off that and Moore, Moore is the best garbage points – and this is no disrespect to him – but he scores off garbage points better than anybody maybe in the league right now. So they were able to get some of that and drive their field goal percentage up. But I do think our length bothered them shooting some pullups, shooting some threes and then on the offensive glass.”

Oats on Chris Youngblood’s efforts on the glass…

“Chris is the ultimate competitor. He hates losing at anything. He’s gonna talk, be aggressive. He’s trying to be physical. He had a couple fouls where maybe he was trying to do some stuff like that. He’s got to be a little bit better with that. But yeah, I mean, he’s going to get to the O boards and kind of try to use his strength. He’s a strong kid. He’s strong and competitive. So he’s going to make plays like that. He led us in offensive rebounds with four. Shoot, he had eight rebounds. He played less than 20 minutes, had nine points and eight rebounds. It’s a pretty efficient night for a guard.”

Oats on Cliff Omoruyi’s aggressiveness…

“I’m looking at the leverage numbers. We were better with him in the game on both sides of the ball. We’re +26 on defense with him in and +10 on offense. So he’s impacting the game like we want him to. In just over 17 minutes, to be at +17, I thought he was good. He dunked the ball. He’s 5-of-5 from the floor. Thought he made some really good plays defensively. We a little bit screwed up some pick-and-roll coverages with him. But other than that, he was pretty good, I thought. 

“And the offensive rebounds that he had were huge when the crowd went nuts. I didn’t talk about that either. For the first game not having the students here, I thought the crowd was unbelievably great. I mean, it was packed. They got loud when they were supposed to on the upper plays and we needed stops. Like they were cheering the right stuff. So a big shoutout to our crowd, continuing to cheer all the blue-collar plays when Cliff was all over those O boards. They were getting after it. I loved that.”

Oats on zero assists from Sears with a double-double…

“I thought it’s been good. We’ve made a huge point emphasis on turnovers in practice. I think he’s wanting to get better, wanting to be coached, wants his team to be great. So 10 assists, zero turnovers, that’s how it’s supposed to look for a point guard. But even the best point guards don’t have those type of nights all that often. So this will definitely help his assistant-to-turnover ratio out in the season. I thought he was making the right reads. When they collapsed, he’s spraying it, making early reads. So nobody’s gonna be 100 percent on the reads, but he was a lot closer to 100 today than he’s been some games earlier in the season.”

Oats on Labaron Philon, others guarding Fears…

“I thought most of our guys did pretty a job. I mean, he ended up with 16, which is a little disappointing, because … I think he had one point with about 10 minutes to go in the game when we’ve been up 28, I think, at that point already. So we get up 28, we’ve held him to one point for the first 30 minutes of the game, and then all of a sudden, we give up 15 in the last 10 minutes or so, whatever it is, in the game. So a little disappointing, but for the first 30 minutes, I thought we did a great job. Labaron came ready to go. I thought he did a really good job. Some other guys got switched on to him in that first 30 minutes, did a great job. 

“But if you get up 28, we gotta be able to keep our focus and continue to get stops and not let a kid get, I mean, pretty much got close to his average there at the end when we’d done a great job on for 30 minutes. So I thought our guys did a good job. I thought Jeremiah showed why he’s on a lot of NBA draft boards in the last 10 minutes of the game when he went and got some buckets. We’re just going to have to really try to get our guys stay focused, no matter what the score is. 

Oats on getting a dominant win to start SEC play…

“I thought the first 20 minutes was exactly what we need to see out of these guys on a nightly basis. I thought we came out with the right mindset. I thought our walk-through was sharp. Our trainer told me that the guys were really locked in as soon as they got here in the morning. It was a great day of prep. I thought it was good preparation coming in. We had some really good practices in the week off. It’s what we need. Now, can we do it consistently? And honestly, can we do it for 40 minutes? We didn’t do it for 40 tonight. We did it for maybe 20 or 30, if you want to call. We got up 28 on them with, I think, 12-something to go in the second half is what they had. To be up 28 with 13 minutes to go in the half and then finish at 28, they played us even for the last 13 minutes, which was a little disappointing. But I think for the first, like I said, 27 minutes of that game, we had the edge we needed.”

Oats on the ball not sticking; Cliff Omoruyi, Chris Youngblood starting to fit in offensively…

“I thought Cliff finished to like he needed to at the rim, rolled out. Guys found him, and I think we missed him a couple of times on some rolls. Some other times, he could have rolled a little quicker. But both him and Chris have played, this is their fifth year of college basketball. They’re veterans. They got some leadership qualities. Chris is a great talker, leading. I think he’s getting more and more comfortable. We need him to continue to get that way. I think he’ll start to make shots at a pretty high clip. He’s been a good shooter his entire career. So it was good to see both of those guys play one for us tonight.”

Oats on Labaron Philon’s growth this season…

“He’s been great. He’s proven himself since he got here. He walked in the summer with an edge about him. He competed in practice. He wanted to guard Sears. Sears is one of the best guards and may be the best guard in the country, and Labaron did a great job on him in the summer. I think he’s got a mature side about him, and his preparation and his competitiveness on both sides of the floor. We knew he was a talented offensive player, but it’s hard to sometimes know how competitive they’re going to be on both ends of the floor. And I think he’s got that. 

“And he makes good reads. He gets downhill. He’s got great touch. He can finish at the rim. He’s he’s really athletic. He shoots it pretty well. He went 2-of-5 from three tonight. He’s going to be a little overlooked with some of the other stat lines, but 16, five and four for a freshman on 5-of-10 shooting with no turnovers himself. Sears had a great game with 10 and zero. Labaron had five assists and no turnovers. So your starting backcourt gets 15 assists and no turnovers, that’s the kind of play you’re looking for. For one of them to be a freshman is pretty impressive. I’m a huge fan of Labaron’s. I think the fact that Fears was so high up on some of these draft boards, I think that motivated Labaron a little bit, too.”

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