Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 92-86 loss to Purdue

Alabama lost to No. 4 Purdue, 92-86, on Saturday afternoon in Coca-Cola Coliseum. After the loss in the Naismith Hall of Fame Series game in Toronto, Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters. Below is everything Oats said after Alabama fell to 6-3 on the season.

Oats’ opening statement…

“They’re a good team. Shoot, they do a really good job. They’ve got good players. Obviously. Zach Edey is the leading candidate for National Player of the Year. You can see why. He’s a tough cover. We didn’t do a terrible job on him, and he had 35 points. So he makes things difficult. You’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do. He gets the ball so deep and he’s so big, and then when you do double him, he’s pretty good passing out of it. You can’t foul him. He went 11-of-11 at the free-throw line. He’s a good free-throw shooter. 

“I thought our kids fought, they battled. For the most part, we executed the game plan, and we just had a little bit too many errors and we’ve got to step up to the free-throw line, make some free throws. My tech cost us, too. I can’t get it in a game like this. It’s on me. But I thought our kids battled against arguably the best team in the country. They’ll be right there at the end. And our kids went toe-to-toe with them for 40 minutes. We’ve just got to figure out a get some wins in these big games.”

Oats on playing in a Purdue-friendly environment in Toronto…

“When I walked out, it was all black and gold. I mean it was Zach Edey’s homecoming. We expected that a little bit. Purdue’s closer up here. They came out preseason No. 1 appreciate and Zach’s from Toronto, so it was good for our guys. We need to play in some of these games. Our guys need to get exposed to an environment like this. I thought they handled it pretty well.”

Oats on Mo Wague…

“He plays really hard. He gives us some effort. I thought he had some good plays today. What did he end up playing, 19 minutes tonight? We’ve got to keep him out of foul trouble. Him and Nick (Pringle) are both a little foul-prone. But yeah, he gives us a little bit of rim protection. I thought him and Nick did a decent job at times, made some big plays. Edey is a handful to handle, so we’ve got to continue to get better. Mo’s going to help us. We needed all the frontcourt help we could get with both him and Pringle fouling out. I think Wague played just under 20 minutes, and Nick played eight minutes. So in 28 minutes, those two accumulated 10 fouls. We’re going to need, especially playing against like Zach Edey and some bigs like that, we’re going to need them to play some minutes.”

Oats on Purdue center Zach Edey…

“No, I haven’t seen anything like him. When I was at Buffalo we played against DeAndre Ayton. Ayton’s big, strong. We were able to do a better job on Ayton, by a long shot, than we were able to do on Zack. I mean, he’s huge. I don’t know what he weighs, but it’s a lot. When you stand next to Nick, he’s a big guy, too, but he dwarfed Pringle, Wague, all of them. All three of those guys are 6-10, 6-11, and they all looked real small next to him. He’s extremely, physically imposing. He imposed his will on us for 35 points tonight. He’s going to do that to a few teams this year, I think.”

Oats on Mark Sears… 

“Sears has played in these big games. He’s got the advantage a little bit. We played in a lot of big games last year. When he was in, he played well. He was ready to go. He hit eight threes. We needed to get him to the free-throw line a little bit more and finish at the rim a little bit better, but he played well. We needed him to play well. We needed him to carry us on offense a little bit tonight, and he did.”

Oats on Sears’ leadership…

“We’ve been on him about being a leader. He’s been opening his mouth a little more. We’ve got to get him to play hard on defense the whole time. I’m looking at his defensive leverage, he was a +0.68, which is really high. So I thought he really tried hard on D. That leadership comes by throwing i to everybody else. Defenses are bordering, moving the ball. I thought he did a decent job moving the ball. Our whole team did a good job moving the ball. We had 20 assists. Mark is the guy that played a lot of minutes last year, that was in all of those big games, that knows what it takes. And he’s been pretty vocal. I’m pretty happy with his leadership this year.”

Oats on the difference in Sears from last year to this year…

“Offensively, he’s playing a lot more on the ball. We guard downhill a little bit more, attacking, being pretty aggressive. He did that last year a little bit, too, but just taking more of a scoring role for us, and he will. Brandon’s not here this year. He’s been that way. Defensively, I thought he was great in the Oregon game, and he was a lot better this game. We need great games out of him every game, and he showed he’s capable of it. And we just got to get it for every possession every game he’s in.”

Oats on Mo Dioubate’s status, need for other “bigs” to step up…

“Mo is not really a big. He’s kind of a wing. He’s 6-6, 6-7. We just felt like we needed to shoot a lot of threes. He’s not one of our better shooters. This was a game that we’re going to go with guys that can really spread them out. And maybe in hindsight, we play him to get some more rebounds on the defensive end. But we knew we were going to have to score some points to beat this team. You weren’t going to hold these guys to a 0.9-something or a 1.0. Their offense is one of the best offenses in the country. So we knew we were going to have to score some points. We put some guys in that can make some shots. We made 19 threes. (Latrell Wrightsell) had three, Sam (Walters) had a couple. You kind of go down the line. We kept those guys in that can make some shots. That was kind of the thinking behind some of the rotations.”

Not a member, Alabama fans? Join BOL today!

Have you subscribed to BamaOnLine.com yet? You can sign up for ONE MONTH of premium access to our Alabama coverage for just $1! Be able to read all of BOL’s premium articles and nuggets covering Alabama sports and recruiting and also join thousands of other Crimson Tide fans around the globe on the BOL Round Table message board! CLICK HERE!