Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 85-82 loss at Creighton

Alabama lost to No. 8 Creighton, 85-82, on Saturday night in its first true road game of the year. After the loss at CHI Health Center Omaha, Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters, and below is everything Oats said after Alabama fell to 6-4 on the season.

Oats’ opening statement…

“That’s a tough loss. I mean, they’re a good team. We fought. We were in there definitely wasn’t one of our better shooting nights, but they didn’t shoot it great either. (Ryan) Kalkbrenner affected the rim in the second half. We were able to get downhill to finish at the rim a little bit better in the first half. We’re not doing enough to win against good teams right now, and Creighton’s a really good team. It looked like Kalkbrenner was fine in the second half. Hopefully he’s healthy and they can go on and win a bunch of games because it would help us. 

“But they’re good. I mean, they do a good job defensively. They did a good job guarding the 3-point line. It’s our season-low in threes made. We didn’t shoot it great, and it was large part due to the way they guard. They kind of run you off the line and push down into Kalkbrenner. Our defensive end, we just weren’t quite good enough. We’ve got to do a better job guarding the ball ourself. I didn’t think we did a great job with that. 

“Our bigs have to figure out how to guard without fouling. This is two games in a row that both Nick (Pringle) and Mo (Wague) have fouled out in not that many minutes. I mean, they combined for 30 minutes and 10 fouls tonight. It was something similar against Purdue last game. So they’ve got to do a better job guarding without fouling. We’ve got to do a better job of not putting them in position where they need to foul.

“But we had some positive things. I thought we played well in stretches, but we’ve got to figure out how to win a close game against a good team here.”

Oats on Pringle’s play, Alabama’s effort to get the ball inside…

“We tried putting Nick in different spots to get him slashing. We knew that Kalkbrenner would play off him, just kind of clog up the lane, so we tried to spread him out, get him moving a little bit. We were able to get one some of those lobs. Now, he’s got to do a better job with the free throw line, but I liked his energy. I thought he played hard. We need him to be good for us. He was good. He’s got to make free throws, he’s got to learn how to guard without fouling so we can keep him on the floor a little bit more. He needs to get points when he gets fouled.”

Oats on guarding Creighton at the 3-point line…

“I mean, OK. We did that part of the game plan decent. I did think they just missed some open threes, and we got fortunate. I mean, (Baylor) Scheierman on that underneath out of bounds play was wide open, just missed it. Thought (Steven) Ashworth had a couple of wide-open ones. So we didn’t want them to get any off. We said we wanted less than 20 3-point attempts. We did that. We still weren’t good enough on the defensive end to beat them. We gave up a 1.25. That’s not very good defense at all. So that part of it, we were alight. A lot of other parts, we were not. We’ve got to do a better job. I didn’t think we did a great job on (Trey) Alexander. I mean, he got in the paint a little bit, shot some tough shots, made them. He was 8-of-15. He only took one three but he has 22 points, led them in scoring. I didn’t think we did a very good job on him, to be honest with you.”

Oats on Mark Sears…

“Mark’s tough, physical. He’s played in the offense before. He can get downhill. He’s a strong guard. We thought we could attack some of their perimeter players. He got to the offensive glass. … I did think he did a decent job getting down call the rim, though. He didn’t get to the free-throw line once, which is an issue. He’s a guy that typically gets fouled a lot, and for whatever reason, he didn’t make it a free-throw line tonight. But he’s a tough, physical guard that gets downhill.”

Oats on if this road performance bodes well for down the road…

“Look, in our four losses, we’ve shown that we’re right there with all the best teams in the country. But we don’t do enough winning stuff to actually win the game. So I think it reaffirmed what we already knew after the Purdue game, Clemson, Ohio State. You look at the efficiency metrics, a lot of them has us top 10 in the country. Nobody in the country has us top 10 because we don’t make enough winning plays in the games. We’re right there. Our offense is efficient enough, our defense stinks right now and we don’t make enough winning plays. We had a big stop late in the game. We don’t box out, they get an O board.

“Like we couldn’t get stops when we needed it. We’re in there. We had a lead on them in the second half. We give up a big run there kind of from that 8-minute mark kind of down to about the four. You go every 4-minute media timeouts, that 8-to-4 mark was a disaster for us. We had some of our better players not play well on offense, and our defense wasn’t good enough. I think they went on a 9-0 run kind of in that make to take a 6-point lead. And we’ve got to make winning plays. When it’s winning time, you get down the last eight minutes of the game and it’s a tight game, you’ve got to figure out how to get some stops and some rebounds and get good quality shots on the other end, and we’re not doing that right now.”

Oats on Alabama’s effort on the glass…

“It was great for the first 30 minutes or so, and then we just… On the offensive end, we were pretty good most of the game. Defensively, we did a pretty good job keeping them off the O boards, and then the last five minutes, eight minutes, whatever it was, I thought the floodgates kind of opened. I think they had five O boards late in the game after we held them to almost none. Like I said, when it’s winning time, you’re in a close game, we’ve got to make winning plays. We’ve got to go get defensive rebounds when it’s winning time.”

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