Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 91-71 loss at Tennessee

The Alabama men’s basketball team lost to sixth-ranked Tennessee, 91-71, on Saturday at Knoxville’s Thompson-Boling Arena. After the Crimson Tide’s first SEC loss, coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters. Below is everything Oats said after dropping to 12-6 (4-1 SEC).

Oats’ opening statement…

“That was as dominating a performance somebody has put on us in a long time around here. They’re good, they’re tough, they’re physical and we weren’t ready for it. I didn’t do a good enough job prepping them for their aggressiveness. I mean, they forced 22 turnovers. They scored 23 points off our turnovers. They scored 17 second-chance points. When you give up 40 points off turnovers and second-chance points, you’re not going to win very many games.

“You’ve got to give them a ton of credit. Coach (Rick) Barnes’ teams always play hard. They’re one of the best teams on defense every year, and they dominated us in a big way. We’ve got to go back and figure out how to get a little tougher, take care of the ball a little bit better. And obviously, we weren’t great on defense either. So disappointing. 

“Good thing is it’s one game. I told our guys when we lost up here last year and still won the league. We’re going to have to get a lot tougher. They exposed some of our softness. I thought after this game, we did get a lot tougher and played a lot better after we lost up here last year. So hopefully, that same thing happens. We’ll see if some guys show some character and come back ready to play a little tougher brand of basketball.”

Oats on if effort was an issue…

“They played harder than we did. Whenever the team plays harder than you, effort is an issue. Now, even if you play really hard, if you’re going to turn the ball over 22 times – you can play super hard, turn it over 22 times, you’re not winning the game. Not against a team like this. So I thought effort was a little bit issue, but not nearly as just being soft with the ball, making bad decisions, not having a good enough plan from the head coach. 

“I’ve got to do a better job getting these guys ready to go against their pressure and what we thought our plan was. Well, it wasn’t very good. Effort was a little bit of the issue, but a bigger issue was just, to me, some toughness, learning how to handle physicality, decision-making with the ball in our hands. It wasn’t where it needed to be tonight.” 

Oats on what to do to limit turnovers and second-chance points…

“The second chances, obviously, you’ve got to box out and rebound. You’ve got to have five guys that are willing to mix it up on the defensive glass. Now, we actually cleaned up the rebounding issue a little bit in the second half, but part of that was they just kept going to the free-throw line because we were just making some dumb fouls. So they didn’t miss as many field goals in the second half to get offensive rebounds. 

“But as far as the turnovers go, we didn’t have an issue. I think we were averaging 12 on the year going into this game. In conference play, they’ve been bad. Shoot, Mark (Sears) is our primary ball handler, and he had seven tonight. He’s got to be better. He wasn’t very good against Missouri with the turnovers. We’ve got to get him to get guys outlets to get it out when he’s faced some pressure. 

“Rylan (Griffen), who doesn’t handle it a ton for us, had five tonight. We’ve got to get those guys that aren’t necessarily handling it a ton – we can’t have Rylan having five turnovers. But it’s a combination of them being smarter, better with the ball, stronger with the ball and guys giving them outlets when they’re getting trapped and pressured and a combination of two. We’ve got to clean up turnovers.”

Oats on preparing for Zakai Zeigler, Jahmai Mashack’s pressure on the ball…

“It’s impossible because you don’t have anybody on your team that plays as hard and is as quick as Zeigler. All of a sudden, he’s up in you and you’re not used to it. We tried to tell the guys what it’s going to be like, tried to replicate it. Sometimes you’ve got to experience it happening. Now, it would have been nice if we could have not just – to get down 27 at one point, your guys didn’t show enough fight. 

“You can’t replicate what Zeigler does to you, but you can still show a little bit more toughness than what we showed tonight. It’s hard to replicate. I mean, it’s the whole team, it’s not just Zeigler. (Santiago) Vescovi gets into you. He got out and picked us. Mashack – shoot, if you don’t guard, you don’t play for Coach Barnes, period. So they’ve got five guys on the floor that are going to play hard and guard all the time, and that’s why they’re good every year.”

Oats on Zeigler and Mashack’s defense on Mark Sears…

“They got up into him. They pressured him. They took us out. They blew up screens. When he’s off ball, we couldn’t get them open off the ball very well. Their physicality bothered him, and then it’s like they’re up into him and they’re denying passing lanes and other guys aren’t getting open off screens and he just struggled a little bit. We’ve got to help him have a better plan, but we’ve just got to get tougher, to be honest with you.”

Oats on Alabama’s forwards’ trouble with Jonas Aidoo…

“That was an issue in the first half. He’s a big problem. We were fortunate he got two fouls. We would have been down a whole lot more if they didn’t have three guys with two fouls in the first half that couldn’t play for parts of the first half. I thought he was killing us, like kind of coming off those floppy actions. They curl a little bit. We’re trying not to switch it, sometimes we were forced to switch it. He buried the guard. We didn’t do a good enough getting our guys ready to play against. 

“Now, (Dalton) Knecht has been killing everybody. He probably would have 35 again tonight if this would have been a close game, they would have been going to him a lot more. The fact that it was 20 most of the second half, I thought he kind of let his foot off the gas. He had 17 at the half. He’s had some second halves where he’s just had explosions here lately. 

“We held him below what he’s been averaging the last three games, but we didn’t do a very good job on him either. He killed us when it mattered. So between him and Aidoo and shoot (Jordan) Gainey played better than what he’s – to have a guy come off the bench and shoot it like he shot it tonight, I mean, he played great for them, too.

Oats on Aidoo…

“They’re kind of coming off those pen downs and floppies, curling in and he buried it. Kind of had to help a little bit. Because the guard was, we were trying to chase the guards through them and then he would just kind of bury our bigs in there. He got deep post catches. They did a good job. We didn’t fight duck-ins very well, but some of that was probably needing to guard some of those actions a little better. We would, next time, plan to have our guys a little better prepared for some of his stuff.” 

Oats on what Tennessee was doing to defend the three…

“The first thing they did is they didn’t get beat off the dribble very much. When they did, they were still like right there on you where they weren’t clean beat, and they just build out. So we’re not collapsing the defense, spraying it, getting kick-out threes like we usually do. So they weren’t helping out the shooters to begin with. When they did have to get in a rotation, which was rare, they just flew at you. 

“They play hard, play with effort. They fly around. So they fly at you. They’d be put on the floor, the next guy’s coming. They did a great job. Coach Barnes had a good game plan. Best job anybody’s done on us defensively. So I know we’ve got to do a better job getting ready for the next time we play them.”

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