Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 74-47 win over South Carolina

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Alabama men’s basketball team defeated South Carolina, 74-47, Tuesday at Coleman Coliseum. After the SEC home opener, Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters. Below is everything Oats said after moving to 10-5 (2-0 SEC).

Oats’ opening statement…

“It was great to be back in Coleman. It was great to have the students. I thought they did an outstanding job. The energy was great from the crowd. Hopefully, we can continue to play well and give them a good reason to keep turning out because that energy we needed. Obviously, it wasn’t a good start. South Carolina is a confident team that’s been winning.

“I think Myles Stute had made the comment that the SEC wasn’t ready for South Carolina. We made sure we played for our guys. We made the point we’ve been the team that’s been winning the SEC here lately, not South Carolina. But they were confident. They came in ready to play. Their coach has done a great job, (Lamont) Paris is a good coach and they got us out of the gate.

“I didn’t think we were ready to play. We had four turnovers our first five possessions. They scored 13 quick ones. After we got settled in, we did a really good job. The rest of the first half, we did a great job. We had multiple 4-minute battles between media timeouts where they didn’t score a point in the second half. That’s the defense we’re looking for moving forward.

“I did think they got a little tired. They’re used to playing so slow, and we ran them up and down a little bit. They had some guys that were gassed. Our guys said it. They tried to call some timeouts to stem the tide a little bit, but our guys said, ‘They’re tired. They’re ready to crack. Let’s crack them.’ I thought we did a good job. In the past, the coach would have called a timeout after we go on a run and they go on a run. We didn’t do that tonight. I thought they called a timeout, we come out of the timeout, got stops and kept the momentum going our way. 

“So a big conference win. We needed to go 2-0. We’ve got a big one on the road at Mississippi State on Saturday. They’re going to be tough, too.”

Oats on what Alabama would be without Mark Sears…

“Not nearly as good as we are. The first half, he held us in there. We were struggling the first time to score. We had too many turnovers. We played an awful first half, it’s probably as bad a half as we’ve played all year, and somehow we’re still up one in large part due to Mark. Davin Cosby made a great point on the bench. He ends up with 31. Nobody realized he had 31. It’s the most unselfish 31 points we’ve seen. So I thought he was making the right plays, moving the ball, being a great teammate, and he still ends up with 31 points. 

“So he kind of proves you can play the right way, move the ball and when you’re as talented as he is, he still ends up with 31 points. He’s super efficient. He goes 6-of-8 from three, doesn’t miss a free throw, 10-of-13 from the field. It doesn’t get much better than that. And I thought his defense – when he’s locked into the game and playing defense like he did, and offensively, he’s one of the best guards in the country.”

Oats on Mo Wague’s status… 

“He’s kind of week-to-week. It’s his right foot that he had to have the surgery on. It kind of flared up. We needed to rest him. He’s been out of practice the last couple days, didn’t play tonight. We’ll see if we can get it right. We’ve got a day off tomorrow. We’ll see what we can do by Saturday.”

Oats on what changed defensively in the second half…

“I thought our energy changed in the second half. How do we sustain it? I think it’s a lot more fun to play that way. Hopefully, the guys want to sustain their energy. We went to a little bit more switching. I thought Mo Dioubate – now, we started to half out great, so it wasn’t like he came in and got us stops. But I did think him and Nick (Pringle)’s energy was really driving us. We were getting beat up on the glass pretty good in the first half. Dioubate comes in and gets six rebounds in just over nine minutes. I thought him and Pringle’s energy, toughness really made a big difference for us. 

“What was it 19-12 in the glass at the half? We ended up with 36. Some quick math, was it 24-12, was that what it was in the second half? There you go. A high school math teacher with some quick math. So we doubled them up in the second half on the glass, and look, that was in large part to Mo Dioubate playing tough. I mean, he gets six rebounds. He had a fourth of our rebounds in the second half in nine minutes. You can look to see him get a few more minutes here and there because if he’s going to play that tough – and we’re lacking some toughness right now – we’ve got to get him in a little more.”

Oats on keeping the foot on the gas…

“I thought the effort… Look, I had Coach (Patrick) Murphy from softball come talk to them yesterday. The whole ‘Mudita,’ having genuine joy, vicarious joy through your teammates’ success. I thought we had that tonight guys. You saw all the guys in the huddle attack Mo Dioubate coming in because he’s playing great. He’s a kid that hasn’t played much that’s had an unbelievable attitude, and they were happy as can be. 

“Nick Pringle won the Hard Hat, as soon as I gave it to him, he turned around, flipped it and put it on Mo’s head, kind of anointed Mo as the Hard Hat winner if you had Hard Hat points per minute. I loved it. I thought Nick was a great leader, showed the right stuff. I think our effort stayed great. We kept playing for each other, the ball kept moving. When you play unselfish, you take care of the ball and you play defense like that, we’re one of the best teams in the country.”

Oats on Alabama’s competitiveness tonight…

“The start of the game wasn’t where it needed to be. After we got down, I thought it was pretty good. I thought we competed on defense in the last half, even a little bit more in the last half of the first time. Then I thought the second half was – I mean, they had 10 points in the second half with four minutes and some change to go. So we were very competitive, competed hard for probably the last 35 minutes or so. I don’t know if we’ve got to make a change in the group to start or the starters just got to get together a little bit more to start the game. But I thought for 35 minutes, we competed pretty hard.”

Oats on if this was the best defensive game of the year…

“A hundred percent. To me, it’s the best. If we take out the first 4-5 minutes, and again, when you turn the ball over four of your first five possessions, you don’t help your defense out. So if you take away the beginning of the game, I think by far, probably the last 35-36 minutes, this game, it’s by far been our best defensive performance of the year.”

Oats on Grant Nelson’s presence without scoring….

“He’s got great size. He’s athletic. He can move. We need him to get a little tougher, go get some more offensive rebounds. He played 24 minutes. We need him to come up with some offensive boards and make a difference that way. Mo Dioubate kind of came in and did that for us. We need Grant to play with some physicality like that. But he’s athletic. He wants to help the team in any way possible. He’s a great kid. The steals, the rim protection because he can block shots. He had the one blocked shot. That was a big blocked shot. We’ve got to get some more rim protection. Nick had two, which was great. But Grant is going to help us. There’s going to be games where he scores 20. We’ve got to get him going, though, right now. He’s a guy that we really need to get going here.”

Oats on if this team can be the best team in the country…

“Yeah, I 100 percent believe it. We’ve played with the best team. We were up nine on Purdue in the second half with an over 75 percent chance of winning the game in the second half. We’ve just got to compete every possession, and I thought Mark competed every possession. If we took care of the ball tonight – the turnovers really hurt your defense and your offense both, and we have not had issues up until SEC play with turnovers like this. Aaron (Estrada) has got to take care of the ball a little bit better for us. Rylan (Griffen) has got to take care of it. Some of our better players have got to do a little bit better job taking care of the ball.

“But if we take care of the ball on offense and we can guard like we did for the last 36 minutes of this game, I do believe we’re one of the best teams in the country. And we haven’t gotten a quality win – I think we’re still at zero Quad 1 wins – but we played with Purdue, who is No. 1 in the country. Arizona has been No. 1 in the country. We were up on them when they had to call a timeout in the second half. We’ve been up on Creighton in the second half, at least six. They’re one of the better teams in the country. Clemson. We’ve got to close those games. If we had those four wins, which we don’t, we’d be talking a whole different deal. 

“But we’ve been up on them and felt like we should have won the games, could have won the games. We’ve just got to do a better job closing. And Mark was talking about it in the half, our last 12 minutes of our games have not been good. We hit the under-12 media timeout, and he did a great job being a leader, talking about it. ‘We’ve got to get stops.’ And I thought we did a pretty good job at that under-12 and under-8 media timeout.”

Oats on explanation on the double technical…

“They said that our guys were kind of talking. There was a lot of talking. That run they came out of the game (with) 13, their guys were yelling at our bench for whatever reason, I don’t know. They made the statement the SEC isn’t ready for them. I guess we’ll see if the SEC is ready for them. This SEC team was ready for them. They were talking an awful lot during the game. I don’t condone us talking to the other team off the bench, but I heard what their guys were saying right out of the gate. So that quick 13-point run at the beginning of the game didn’t last very long.”

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