Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 79-76 loss at Tennessee

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – No. 6 Alabama lost to No. 5 Tennessee, 79-76, at the buzzer on Saturday at Thompson-Boling Arena. After the loss on the road, Alabama head coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters. Below is everything Oats said after the Tide dropped to 23-6.

Oats’ opening statement…

“We didn’t do a great job closing it. I’m gonna take most of the blame for the last 30 seconds. It’s on me. I subbed our bigs out to get the rebound before I should have. I shouldn’t have subbed them out until after we secured the rebound. So that was on me. And then I had a chance to call a timeout – coaches can call timeouts on the in-bounds play – and at four, I should have called it. I thought we were getting it in, and that’s on me.

“And we probably could have had better guys in, been a little smaller with 3.8 on the clock to make sure they didn’t get the ball up the floor. We work on end-of-game situations in practice and expect our players to be good at them, and I was not good for the last 30 seconds today. I feel like I failed these guys. For 39 and a half minutes, they out-played them. They were up four. 

“Tough call on Grant’s verticality play there at the end, but it’s the game of basketball. A lot of tough calls in the game. The worst-case scenario is they make a free throw and we still have the ball with 30 seconds to go up one. And I should have left the guys in to make sure that we secured it before we got to the offensive end. And we foul, give them the rebound at the free-throw line. They made 2-for-2, which you’ve gotta give them credit.

“We’ve gotta do a better job making our free throws. They shoot 73% percent, and we shoot 65%. We shot 50% at the rim, 65% at the line. It’s hard to win big games like this. But we were still up four with 30 seconds to go and too many coaching mistakes in the last 30 seconds.”

Oats on how disappointing are Alabama’s struggles at the rim, free-throw line…

“You’ve gotta convert at-the-rims, and you’ve gotta convert your free throws. You can’t beat a good team. Typically, shooting – what we were on layups? Twelve for 29. That’s not good enough against a team like this when you get the ball in the paint. And it was everybody. We had our guys 16-of-32 at the rim, so there was a few in there. But, I mean, nobody was great at the rim, to be honest with you. Youngblood was 1-for-1, and nobody else was over 60% at the rim. Labaron, Dioubate were 60%. Everybody was 50% or lower. So it’s not just one guy. Across the board, we didn’t convert at the rim.

“And then at the free-throw line, Sears for 6-for-6 and that was it. Nobody else made all their free throws. So free throws, the at-the-rims, it’s a team effort. We’ve gotta be better with that on everybody.”

Oats on how you rally the players to get them ready for a tough last two matches…

“We played the No. 1 defense in the country. We were up four with 30 seconds. This will probably make us pay a little closer attention to our end-of-game. Our end-of-half situation wasn’t great either. We should have taken the last shot, gave them too much time, came down, gave them an and-1. So they were +1 in that scenario. If we’d have waited to go a little later, maybe we go +2 in that scenario. 

“Moving forward, we’ve gotta really lock on end-of-half and end-of-games, special situations. I’ve gotta be much better for this team on that. We’ve gotta be better. I think we just pump how great we played during the course of the game and focus in on some controllables like end-of-game situation stuff that we didn’t do a very good job on.”

Oats on what needs to be fixed on baseline out-of-bounds stuff…

“We probably need to get our under out-of-bounds package together earlier in the week instead of giving it to them the day before so we can focus on some other stuff. And they’re good. I mean, they’re physical. They make it hard to get it in. But that’s terrible to have the amount of turnovers we did on underneath out-of-bounds. We had the one over there, we tried to get it to Mo D. Some of that’s on me, too, to be honest with you. I’ve gotta do a better job for these guys.”

Oats on missing an opportunity when Zakai Zeigler was on the bench with two fouls…

“For sure I did. I told the guys halfway through that timeout, ‘We’re not putting them away. He’s on the bench. He’s the only guy that really creates a lot of offense for them.’ You’ve gotta give Gainey a lot of credit tonight. Gainey stepped up in Zeigler’s absence, if you will. He plays 30 minutes. He didn’t even make a 3, but he ends up with 16 points, 6-of-13. He just kind of got to that midrange shot a little too much. He got to the line. He was 6-of-6 at the line. But yeah, I didn’t think we got up on them like we could have with Zeigler out in the game in that part of the stretch in the first half.”

Oats on if feels like Alabama was able to play at its tempo rather than Tennessee’s…

“I didn’t, to be honest with you. I thought it was still too slow. We had 72 possessions. I’m sure they would have liked it under 70. They have the slowest tempo in our league, because it’s hard to score on them. I mean, we even scored a few late in the shot clock that we were fortunate to score. We got way too late in the shot clock too much. We didn’t get enough out in transition, especially in the second half after we got nine. I thought the game slowed down a lot after we got up nine.

“And part of that’s when you’re not getting stops and they’re at the free-throw line and the ball’s going through the net. It’s hard to get out. It might have been a little bit more at times what we wanted but not enough for the whole game, to be honest with you.”

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