Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 85-76 win at Georgia

The Alabama men’s basketball team defeated Georgia, 85-76, on Wednesday in Athens, Ga. Falling behind 17-2 at the under-12 media timeout and trailing by as many as 16 points, the 24th-ranked Crimson Tide completed the comeback win over the Bulldogs to move to 15-6 (7-1 SEC) on the year. Below is everything head coach Nate Oats said after the win.

Oats’ opening statement…

“Look, I can’t say enough about our guys in the second half. They showed some fight. They showed what they’re about. Georgia was obviously much more ready to go to start the game. Coach (Mike) White has done a great job in his second year here of turning it around. The fans are great. This place did not sound like this, look like this or anything until this year. So it’s a much improved program. They probably should have beat Tennessee here. They beat South Carolina. They’re a good team that’s going to win a lot of games. 

“They came out of the gate ready to play. We did not. I thought we missed some shots. It affected how we played offense. I thought we got away from what made us good. They killed us on the glass. I didn’t think we played hard enough. They played a lot harder than us. Came out in the second half and we fixed a lot of what was wrong in the first half. And then it took a little while to go on that…

“There was a timeout with 10 minutes and some change to go and somebody in the huddle was saying, ‘We can win this game.’ And I said, ‘No, stop. We are going to win this game. There’s no we can. We’re winning this game, and here’s how we’re going to do it. We’ve got to get stops. We got to rebound the ball better.’ At one point we were down 31-9 on the boards. From that point, we were 17-8 on the glass. They didn’t score a field goal from that timeout at 10:08 until four and a half minutes to go in the game.

“So we came out of the timeout, got stops, rebounded it, did enough on offense. I thought we played hard enough. We turned them over 19 times to counteract the fact that we did not rebound the ball very well at all. Our field goal percentage in the second half was a lot better, but we were playing off some turnovers and getting out of transition like we’d like to do. And I’ll say (Mark) Sears, I don’t know what he had, about six points with six minutes to go in the game and somehow ended up with 23. He competed. He won our Hard Hat for the blue-collar points. He played hard. He did not want us to lose this game. But a lot of guys didn’t. 

“Grant Nelson showed he’s got some toughness to him, some mental toughness. He’s struggled to shoot the ball. He’s been shooting 40 percent from three in practice. We trust him to make shots. He’s done a good job not taking too many but taking appropriate ones, and those two he hit late in the game were huge. I mean, they sealed the game for. So he showed he’s a winner. He showed the moment doesn’t get too big for him. He didn’t shy away from it. We’ve got a lot of guys that I thought played hard. So this is a big win. If you’re going to try to win the conference, these are games you’ve got to win on the road.”

…

Oats on Alabama’s defense in the second half…

“Better effort. Rebound it. Their second-chance points in the first half, they killed us on. I thought we stayed in front of the ball better. Ball screen defense wasn’t great most of the night, but it got a little bit better in the second half. Shoot, and to be honest with you, they hit some really tough shots. Like our guys can’t get flustered when the other team hits really tough ones and we miss easy ones. Like basketball is a game of runs. I thought we got a little flustered in the first half when we were missing wide open shots. They were making some tough ones. Our defense wasn’t awful, and our offense was good. We just missed some open shots. So we’ve got to just stay with it, stay with it and not let that frustrate us. So I thought we did a better job of that in the second half.”

Oats on Grant Nelson’s two threes late in the game…

“Huge. He needed it. We needed him to start making some threes at the five for us. We played him a few minutes at the four tonight, most of the minutes at the five. So he probably played 20-plus minutes at the five. If he can draw opponents’ fives out away from the perimeter, that helps our offense even more.”

Oats on the offense being smoother in the second half…

“I think we just had to settle down. Like guys make or miss shots, let’s just get good shots. I thought us missing shots made us press a little more. I thought we were turning down open threes. I said that early in the second half at a timeout. Like, ‘Guys, we’re not going to win this game if we start turning down open threes. That’s not how we play. Every open three you get, take it. We’ve just got to go the O boards. They’ll eventually drop.’ In second half, we ended up shooting 50 percent from three. We made six of them after only making two in the first half. 

“We’d like to make more than eight, but we can win multiple ways. We have won before where we haven’t shot the three well, but you can’t not shoot it well and get killed on the O boards and not win like the free throws and turnovers. You’ve got to win some of those others. We didn’t win the rebounds. We ended up shooting it well in the second half. The second half, outside of Mo, we hit all oupside of Mo, we hit all our free throws, all of our guards that got the line. Grant went 100 percent at the line. You got to get to the line, convert at the line, turn them over a little bit, take care of ball. You can still win a game without making a lot of threes.”

Oats on the importance of a win like this when chasing a league title…

“It’s huge. You can’t win the win title if you don’t win some of these. Like there’s going to be games you didn’t play your best basketball, particularly for 20 minutes or whatever, and if you can steal a win at the end of the day then those are the times. I mean, we’re almost halfway through and with only one loss. We’ve got to come home, we’ve got to protect on court. But you’ve got to win some of these on the road because there’s games like Tennessee where we just were awful and they were great and it’s on the road and you’re not going to win. 

“Since I’ve been here, nobody’s won the league 18-0. We’ve won the league twice at 16-2. But you can’t lose games like this. Two years ago when we didn’t win the league in between the two times we won it, we lost this game here. And they were significantly worse back then than they are now, and we lost it. You’ve got to be able to win these games. You’ve got to have some guys with some toughness, some fight, and we have. Everybody that played in that second half showed some toughness, some character, some grit. It was good. We grew up a lot tonight.” 

Oats on Nick Pringle’s status…

“He’s currently suspended. He’s got to decide whether he wants to be part of this program or not with some of his decisions, how he conducts himself. Nothing bad off the court or anything like that. It’s just in practice, in games. We’ll see where he goes. We’ll meet when I get back.”

Oats on what the next step he wants to see heading into February…

“We’ve got to put 40 minutes together on both sides of the ball. We have yet to do it in January. So it’s great that we’ve been able to figure out how to win some games in January not playing particularly well. We’ve yet to play well on both sides of the ball for 40 minutes. Auburn, we were super intense and defense was a lot better. Offense wasn’t very good. LSU, our offense looked great, one of the best offenses in the country that night. I think we were a 1.42 on offense. Our defense wasn’t very good. Tonight, our offense was great in the second half. We scored 58 in the second half. It was awful in the first half, and to be honest with our defense was just OK. We picked both sides up in the second half. 

“If we’re going win a championship, you’ve got to get to a point where you play 40 minutes on both sides of the ball. Not perfect. You may turn it over some. You may miss shots. But your effort, your execution has got to be there for 40 minutes, and we haven’t seen it yet. So we’re going to keep pushing and prodding and encouraging when you see great stuff and coaching them. We called some guys out for some toughness, effort at the half, and they responded and Rylan (Griffen) kind of said after the game, like, ‘Look, guys. When we’re not playing tough, Coach called us out, we responded. We need that sometimes.’ So I thought some of our guys show a lot of toughness tonight in the second half. Let’s not get down 16 before we show some toughness.”

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