Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 95-90 win over Rutgers

No. 9 Alabama defeated Rutgers, 95-90, on Wednesday in its second game of the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas. The Crimson Tide advanced to Saturday night’s championship game with the win, and after topping the Scarlet Knights, coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters. 

Below is everything Oats said after Alabama advanced to 6-1 on the 2024-25 season.

Oats’ opening statement…

“That’s a good team. They’re talented. We didn’t play our best, but give them a lot of credit, they came out ready to play. I’m not so sure we did at the beginning of the game. Dylan Harper’s really talented. Ace Bailey is super talented. In the first half, we didn’t have a very good answer for them. These two guys next to me (Derrion Reid and Jarin Stevenson) were our two best defenders for Ace, for sure, with the size on him. We got in some foul trouble. Jarin had two early, and Derrion got in foul trouble. So we didn’t have a very good answer for him. And then we had no answer at all for Dylan Harper the entire game. So we got to figure our defense out. We’re not where we need to be defensively. Really disappointed in it, but they’re talented, too. Those guys are gonna cause some problems with some other teams, but we got to do a better job.

“Then our turnovers were a major issue. They scored 23 points off our 20 turnovers. That’s way too many for having a skilled, talented team that’s supposed to be a good offensive team. We didn’t take care of the ball very well tonight. So give Rutgers a lot of credit for their physicality. They got into us. They caused some turnovers. They’re a well-coached team. They’re physical. They know what they’re doing. We were in a dog fight, and we were fortunate that we got enough stops late and we went to the offensive glass hard enough. We doubled them up on second-chance points, 18-9. That’s really where we won the game. 

“Mo Dioubate ends up with five O boards. Our team ends up with 16. Nobody else had more than two. So it was Mo and then it was kind of by a group effort from there. So kind of the second game in a row where we won a game on some toughness and rebounding. We will get our offense figured out. We’re gonna stop turning the ball over 20 times. We will get our defense figured out. And hopefully, we keep the rebounding up to the level it’s been these last two games.”

Oats on Rutgers freshmen Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey…

“We’ve had a couple ourselves, and these guys are up there. Ace may be the best mid-range shotmaker I’ve seen. I mean, he just kind of rises up over guys, the floaters with the touch. He’s tough. We didn’t do a great job. We needed more size on him. I thought Derrion did a pretty good job on him. He’s a guy if you don’t have size on him, he’s just shooting over 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 guards. He’s gonna cause some problems. We thought that going in, and then Derrion’s gotta stay up out of foul trouble because he’s turning into an elite defender for us. 

“And then Dylan, he gets to the rim pretty much whenever he wants. We didn’t have anybody that could stay in front of him in ball screens. We didn’t do a very good job. I mean, he’s got some force, some physicality, some strength coming downhill. So if you’re kind of in your drop, he comes downhill with some force and puts some pressure on you at the rim – they didn’t take very many threes. I think Ace was 1-for-3 and Dylan was 0-for-3, so they didn’t take a lot. But Dylan got to the rim whenever he wanted. He also got to the free-throw line. He creates contact a lot with his size, and he makes them. Elite-level scorers go to the free-throw line and make their free throws. He’s 15-of-16 at the line. 

“So those two are really good. They’ll both be high draft picks, I’m sure. I thought Dylan really commanded the game in the second half and really kept them in there most of the second half.”

Oats on the solution for Alabama’s scoring droughts…

“One is we got to take care of the ball. It’s hard to score when you turn it over. So turnovers is the biggest issue. The second thing is, when we’re not playing fast and teams turn us into a half-court team, we got to be able to execute some things, set screens, learn how to create the advantages. We spend a lot of time on teaching our guys conceptual basketball – how to play kind of in the flow, how to attack different coverages in the flow. We’ve got to do a better job working on our execution. Some dead balls, or if we’re in a drop, we need to be able to call a set, and we haven’t done a very job executing stuff that we’ve run. 

“Some of our guys that are tough guys that are impacting winning in a lot of other ways aren’t necessarily great execution guys. Some of our better execution guys need to get better on defense, rebounding, impacting the game in that way. So right now, we gotta do better on both. We gotta get the tough, blue-collar guys better at executing some stuff and getting some of our shooters open that are in. Then we got to get some of the other guys that are better scorers playing a little bit more blue collar and impact winning in other ways other than scoring so that maybe have a little bit more than we currently have right now.”

Oats on the impact Mo Dioubate has had on the last two games…

“We try to embody the blue-collar mentality that we try to preach. We obviously play fast and score a lot of points, but try to build the base of what we do around some blue-collar mentality, and he’s been the best at it. We write out blue-collar points, we call them. He’s won the Hard Hat the last two games. He’s (won) a ridiculous amount of them, to be honest with you. I mean, he’s making bets with his teammates as to whether he’s going to win it. Most of them would be smart not to bet him anymore because he’s gonna win it about every night.

“He gets to get offensive boards. He gets offensive boards from the free-throw line. He gets them everywhere. He’s finishing at the rim. Shoot, he’s 6-of-6 at the free-throw line. I tell the guys, when you locked in, you’re locked in. I think he’s locked into making winning plays. When you’re locked in, you go to the free-throw line, you step up and make your free throws. He’s a guy that struggled at the free-throw line a little bit, but he’s been really locked into just what we need to win. He’s just making big plays. He had a couple of big blocks. I think three big blocks yesterday, two big blocks tonight. He’s just looking to, where can I make an impact. Shoot, he had another block, they called on somebody else that he ended up blocking over the top. He’s figuring out ways to impact winning outside of just scoring the basketball, and then he ends up scoring it because he finds ways to get to the rim, get some dunks, get some tough buckets at the rim. 

“I think three games ago, he took more threes than he had rebounds. We told him, it’s not a recipe for you playing. And we said that can’t happen again. I don’t mind if he shoots a wide-open, catch-and-shoot three. He’s been working on his shot. He’s got to really focus on the stuff that he’s great at – offensive rebounding, defensive rebounding, getting stops, making blocks, getting deflections. The steal he had when we put him in the ball screen was a big play because we weren’t getting stops. And we kind of went to where we had to blitz them. First time we kind of tried to blitz him on the ball screen, he makes a big play making the read on the backside. So he makes big plays. He’s tough. He’s got the best attitude. I mean, when he doesn’t play very many minutes, he’s the best teammate ever. He’s a guy that, as a head coach, you want to find more minutes for him, because his attitude’s been so great ever since he’s been here. Shoot, he’s helping us win games right now. I’d be stupid not to find him minutes the way he’s playing.”

Oats on if he would have put Chris Youngblood on Harper had he been available…

“I would sure hope so. He’s big, strong, tough. He’s got the right mindset. He’s all about winning. Is he quick to stay in front of the guy? We’ll see. But mentally, he’s going to want to, and he’s not going to be happy if he’s getting beat. He’s one of the most competitive kids I’ve ever coached in my life. There’s a reason he was a player of the year in a really good league last year, and he can make shots and he doesn’t turn the ball over. We gotta quit turning the ball over. Our guards got to stop turning the ball over. We gotta get some guys that play two ways – defense and offense. And on offense, take care of the ball, not turn it over. And I think he can be that for us. So hopefully, his recovery comes quick and we get back here pretty quick.”

Oats on Alabama’s ball-screen coverage against Harper…

“I don’t have a good answer on that one, because, honestly, you drop, he comes down with some force. You blitz him – I’ve seen other teams blitz him, and he actually makes all the right reads. I mean, he’s a willing passer. He’s an NBA point guard. So probably the best way, to be honest with you, is you switch him and you got to have five guys in there that can actually guard him because if you got somebody that can’t guard him, they’re just going to own the switch. We had Sears with four fouls and Sears is a big deal to our team. He goes out and I think they went on a 7-3 run like two and a half minutes when he went out of the game. We had to get him back in. As soon as he goes in, we go on a 7-0 run. They’re trying to run him a little bit in the ball screen. So honestly, the best way is to probably switch him, but you got to have five guys that can guard him in there that can switch him. I don’t know how many college programs are gonna have five guys that can guard him that way.” 

Oats on how Rutgers measures up against other teams Alabama has played….

“If they play like they did tonight, they’re one of the better teams in the country. They got two of the most talented players regardless of class – when you talk about two talented freshmen, if they’re talented, freshmen and senior, it doesn’t matter. And they’ve got some other guys that understand their role. They put some pressure on our defense. Our defense didn’t look very good tonight. So based on what I saw tonight, they should be pretty good. I told our guys, we’re gonna see a lot different team than what showed up at Kennesaw. They’re young. I don’t want to speak for them, so I don’t know what the deal was going into that game, but sometimes some younger kids that haven’t experienced playing need to understand there’s a lot of really good college basketball players at all levels. I told our team, we’re going to see a much better team than that, and we did. 

“That’s a team that easily could have beat us tonight if a few things didn’t go away when we needed to late. So I see them competing in the Big Ten. I think they’re going to win some big games. I think the more experienced those young guys can get early, the more you turn them into sophomores because they played so many minutes, the better off they’re gonna be here shortly. So a lot of respect for them. They do a great job. They played us tough. They put a lot of pressure on us. We got a lot to learn after that game. They exposed some stuff we got to get better at.”

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