Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's overtime win over Arkansas

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – No. 16 Alabama defeated Arkansas, 92-88, in overtime on Saturday at Coleman Coliseum. After the Crimson Tide’s final game of the regular season, head coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters. Below is everything Oats said after advancing to 21-10.

Oats’ opening statement…

“We showed a lot of grit. You’ve gotta give Arkansas a lot of credit. I told Coach Musselman after – I told him before the game – his teams always played their basketball at the end of the year. For them to kind of go through the struggles they’ve gone through and them to keep playing hard, I think, is a testament to what they’ve done. They have not had the year that anybody thought that they were gonna have, but they’ve got a lot of talent and they haven’t quit. They’re actually playing their best basketball of the game. And shoot, he’s made two Elite Eights. The Alabama program hasn’t won an Elite Eight in our entire history. He’s had two since he’s been at Arkansas, so he knows what he’s doing. He had them ready to go.

“We obviously were not that well ready to go at the beginning of the game. They came out, jumped on his, got up 15, and then I thought we made a good run to close the half. We made some tough plays. We had too many turnovers. We come out in the second half, I thought our energy was a lot better. But our turnovers were just killing us. We had 11 turnovers, I believe, at the first media timeout of the second half, and then over the next … five, counting overtime, we didn’t turn it over. So once we were able to sit down, start guarding – so basically five straight four-minute medias and then overtime, we didn’t turn the ball over. So once we settled down, quit turning the ball over, our guys made some tough plays.

“Now, things weren’t going well. You look at the free-throw line, they were 22-of-27. We were 17-of-25. They out-scored us from there. They shot it better than we shot it tonight. There was a lot of things they did better. But we figured out a way to get a win. We made some tough plays. The shot Wrightsell made late was huge. Sam Walters in overtime was huge when Trelly was hurt. His three was big, but his offensive putback was huge. He just kept telling us, ‘Put me back in. I’m gonna make some tough plays.’ And that’s what our mindset has gotta be.

“Obviously, we didn’t play. This was not one of our better games for large parts, and you’ve gotta give Arkansas a lot of credit. But I put up on the board before the game, ‘Handle adversity with mental toughness, and do it together.’ I thought we handled a lot of adversity. They got to the bonus quickly in the second half. We had some stupid fouls. We couldn’t make a shot. A lot of guys didn’t play their best game. We turned it over. Kept playing. That first bucket Estrada made, you could just kind of see the relief on his face. ‘I finally got one to go in.’ Go down the list. Multiple guys, things weren’t going well. Grant got in foul trouble again. And we just hung in there and fought it out.

“So I think in the last two years, we’re 5-0 in overtime games. Our second year when we lost that overtime game to UCLA in the Sweet 16, I think we learned a little bit about how to get our guys mentally ready to play. We didn’t play well against UCLA. We felt like we should have won the game in regulation. But we didn’t play well in regulation. We felt like tonight we didn’t win it. But there’s an attitude that you need to have going into it. There’s nothing you can do about the last 40. Let’s just get refocused on what we need to do right now in the next five, and I felt like we did a really good job of that.

“I thought Mark Sears’ leadership throughout the game was as good as he’s had all year. These teams are doing a really good job making it difficult on him to score. He just kept hanging in there, hanging in there, making tough plays. He made a bunch of tough plays on defense. I thought he made a huge jump in his leadership. We get into the huddles, he’s talking. He’s not letting guys quit. Trelly gets on fire, he’s like, ‘Let’s run something for Trelly. Let’s get Trelly a shot.’ I thought Mark Sears’ leadership today was as good as I’ve seen all year, and that’s what we’re gonna need out of him moving forward.”

Oats on how Latrell Wrightsell helps Alabama get back on track…

“We needed him in a bad way. I feel like if we’d have had him in all those games he was out, we definitely wouldn’t have lost some of the ones we did. We’d have a league championship if he hadn’t gone down. But that’s some of the adversity we’ve gotta play through. We didn’t win a league championship, so let’s get ourselves back together, let’s compete for a tournament championship. He played almost 40 minutes, and he made some tough plays. You could tell he’s probably not quite in good enough shape to play 40 minutes, but he had to. We went to overtime, and he went out with the trainer. He’s tough. He’s a tough kid, made big plays. 

“You could kind of tell he’s bent over, struggling to breathe. We got him out quick, got with the trainer. Sam comes in, makes some big plays. We get Trelly back in and he closes it for us. He was big. … Trelly played great. And other than that one turnover late, he didn’t make many mistakes. And I told him, too, he’s 100 percent from the free-throw line. I don’t know who’s 100 percent playing as many minutes as he does in the 31st game of the year from the free-throw line, but he is. So just hold onto the ball, let them foul you or call a timeout if you get stuck. But I thought he was huge, and we need him in a bad way. Him scoring 20, we needed every one of those points tonight.”

Oats on Sam Walters stepping up for Walters in overtime…

“Man, I was super happy for him. He’s a kid that shot it well early, struggled. Maybe this can get his confidence back going. That one three he hit was right in front of us. I’m like talking in his ear before he catches it, like, ‘Perfect, great.’ I don’t know what I said, but it was something like making sure he shot it. I thought he even fumbled it a little. I don’t really care if he fumbles it or not, he needs to shoot every open shot. He shot it, it went it. Sometimes they need that lid to come off the rim. I think maybe that did it for him. 

“That putback was huge. It was in traffic. It was a tough play. I think that made him happier than anything he did all game, which is great because he’s trying really hard to make tough plays, and he made some. He had the tie-up on the defensive rebound at the end. He catches it with nobody in front of him. He’s trying to be smart. I said any time we get a guaranteed two points, we’re taking it, like go dunk the ball. So he got himself to 10 points on that last play and had himself a pretty solid game in some limited time. I thought the 14 minutes he was in, we were +3. That was big.”

Oats on what he said at halftime, overtime…

“I was a little upset with some of the plays in the beginning of the first half at halftime. I didn’t think we were playing as hard as we needed to. Some of the turnovers were extremely careless. We screwed up some defensive assignments. But we had a pretty close to the half, so I tried to use that at the end of the halftime. We’ve got some positive things going. If we don’t turn it over, it didn’t feel like they would guard us. I felt like they would take a lot of tough, contested shots. Like, guys like if we could keep them out of the paint, stop fouling – we fouled there at the beginning of the second half. 

“We shot too many non-rim twos, like 18 percent of our shots were non-rim twos, where on the year, it’s closer to 10 percent. But they shot 30 percent of their shots were non-rim twos. I knew that they would just keep taking like the contested, tough, long twos, and over the course of time, we’re gonna trust our numbers. They shot 35 percent on those 20 shots. We actually shot it alright on ours, didn’t. We shot 50 percent on those 14 shots we took. But just stop turning it over, force them to take tough shots. They got the line too much on us. That was kind of the big difference in the game. 

“But I told them, like, we can get some stops and get out in transition and run. And even in the beginning of the second half, we were getting out in transition, but we weren’t converting. We had some just almost guys being too unselfish at the beginning of the second half. I don’t if you remember the one I thought Sears should have shot. He drops it off. Grant gets the charge on it. When we’ve got numbers, we’ve gotta convert. But I thought the guys just hung in there, hung in there. I told them we’re gonna face a little adversity. We already have in the first half. Like let’s continue to play through it, and we’ll get this thing turned around.”

Oats on the significance of a game like this when guys don’t play well…

“It’s huge. You get confidence. And you don’t want to base everything you do based on wins and losses. We need to be mature enough to walk in on Monday – we’re off tomorrow. When we walk in on Monday, we need to be able to learn from this because there’s plenty that we didn’t do well. But at the end of the day, you keep score to get a winner and a loser at the end, and we figured out a way to make enough winning plays throughout the end of the game to get the win. And we need to know that we’ve got winners. We’ve got guys that are seasoned veterans that know how to win games when you’re not playing your best.

“Like I mentioned before, we’ve a few of these games this year. To get one here lately – shoot, we didn’t play very well at Florida. I thought the guys had a little quit in them at Florida. We let them know we’re not doing that again. This isn’t who we are. We may not play well, but we’re gonna keep fighting and playing hard through the end. We didn’t play well this game. We kept fighting, we kept fighting. They need to know that when we don’t play well, if you keep fighting, stay the course, do what we’re supposed to do, we still got a chance to win.

“Because that Arkansas team may not have a great record, they’re a very talented team. There’s multiple NBA scouts here today, and they’re looking at players on both teams. They’ve got guys that will probably play in the NBA. It’s a talented team. I thought our guys, against a pretty talented group, hung in there and made a bunch of tough, winning plays, and we need some confidence knowing we can win against some talented players when we didn’t play our best basketball.”

Oats on the importance of securing a top-four seed in the SEC Tournament…

“If we’re gonna win that tournament up there, it’s very hard to win it playing four in a row, especially with our depth right now. Hopefully, we get Rylan back. He’s day-to-day, spending a ton of time with Clarke, the trainer. But without him, our starting guards played 42, 40 and 39 minutes. If you’re gonna try to do that over four straight days, it’s gonna be very difficult. Now, even playing over three straight game would be hard. That’s why it would be helpful if we can get Rylan back or Sam or Davin to really step up and give us some minutes.

“Getting a bye till Friday makes it much more likely that you’ve got a chance to win that tournament. So this was big. We needed to win, and our guys knew what was at stake. I think we’re assured a two or three now. Is that accurate? That’s what somebody told me. It means we’ll be opposite bracket from Tennessee. We’ll see who we end up with on Friday and Saturday, and see if we can’t get a rematch with Tennessee for a third time on Sunday. That’d be great.”

Oats on if he can learn from Alabama’s late-season skid in 2022…

“Yeah, that comes back to mind. I think the ‘22 group, we lost our way a little bit, but this group’s different. Like I didn’t ever get the feeling that these guys have, like, quit on each other at all. We may have played bad. We may have quit in the game against Florida. But these guys like each other a lot. They play for each other. Estrada has only been here a year, but if you knew him, he’s one of the best kids you’ll ever meet. He’s like an unbelievably great teammate. Pringle has got a lot of emotion to him, and he’s a leader that kind of draws everybody together. These guys are fighting for each other. Grant’s a great kid. Wrightsell. I go down this list and you look at every kid that’s playing – even guys that aren’t playing – I feel like this group wants to keep playing together. They love playing with each other. So it’s different. And I’m not saying – there’s some really good kids on the ‘22 team. I’m not trying to say they’re all… but this group’s definitely different. 

“But it’s human nature to go back in history, look at things that have gone well and not gone well. You learn from them. We’re gonna try to stay as positive as we can with these guys while still trying to correct mistakes that they make. But that group I don’t think was as positive and they weren’t as together as this group is. I think when you stay together – and I’ll go back to what I said earlier about Sears. When your best player was as good a leader as he was today and talking everybody up. ‘Let’s get Trelly a shot. Trelly just made one.’ He’s the leading scorer, maybe probably wasn’t at his average yet at the time when he was saying that. It goes a long ways. We’ve got a lot of great kids that are really pulling for each other. Our attitudes are good. We haven’t lost our way in that regard at all, and I think that goes a long ways.”

Oats on Nick Pringle’s performance at the free-throw line…

“He’s worked at it. He’s been in the gym. If you notice, he’s kind of changed it. He had an issue with kind of getting his thumb in there, and if you shoot one-handed, you can’t really… because you need to hold it right. So he’s kind of gone to just shooting it. He just keeps the left hand off, and he’s been pretty good. Six-for-10 is not – obviously, you’d like to see him 7- of 8-of-10, but for what he’s been used to, we needed all six of those points tonight. I’m fired up every time he gets there and goes 2-for-2. Shoot, he out-shot Grant. Grant was a 90 percent shooter halfway through the year. He shot a better percentage than Grant did today. And we needed them all. 

“We need Nick in there. He makes the offense go. He knows how to get our guards open. He knows how to play in pick-and-roll. He’s smart with screen angles – when to set, when to slip out. So he makes our offense go. But at the end of games, sometimes it’s hard to keep him in because teams may foul him. But if he’s shooting free throws – we had him in a lot at the end here. We tried to do some offense, defensive substitutions when we knew they were gonna foul us. He’s gonna keep working. We need him. At this time, you’re not gonna practice for two hours and go hard. It’d be stupid as a coach. But these guys can get in the gym and shoot some free throws with some extra time they have because we practice shorter, and he’s been using his time pretty wisely, I think.”

Oats on Grant Nelson’s ability to play with four fouls…

“We need him to quit getting in foul trouble. Some of these fouls he gets are questionable calls. But some of them are, he’s just got to be smarter. Don’t put yourself in a spot where they can call it. He’s gotta quit doing that. I don’t know how many rebounding files he’s gotten over the last few games where he’s in foul trouble the whole time. Quit grabbing people on rebounds. Box out, go get the ball. You’re athletic enough. Hit the guy on a checkout and then go get the ball. So we need him to be smarter, but he played pretty aggressive with four fouls. You can’t go back in and not be aggressive. 

“We probably should have been doubling the post once he got the fourth foul when it went in. We made the adjustment the next time out. We called, and I don’t know if they actually went back in on him. Yeah, 14 and 13 is a big night, and we needed every last one of those points and rebounds. You kind of look at +/- with guys. In a much shorter time than all four other starters, him and Sears tied at +9. Those 31 minutes he played, we were a +9. That’s pretty big. So we need him to stay in the game.”

Oats on sending the seniors out with a win…

“We started all five seniors, and you kind of go down the list. The lowest minutes we played anybody was Grant at almost 31 minutes. The only disappointment I had was we didn’t get up enough of a lead – shoot, I don’t think we had a lead till overtime – but we never were able to get Max Scharnowski in because Max has been such a great kid. Max has been here longer than any of these seniors. I wish we’d have been able to get him in. We went to starting the seniors. If we only had four scholarship guys, I probably would have started Max as a fifth starter, but we had the five scholarship guys. We needed a win to assure a double bye to Friday. But I wish we would have been able to get Max because he’s as much as Tyler Barnes and BJ, Adam Cottrell, some of these walk-ons that have been here a long time and contributed to the culture that we’ve built here, Max is just that good. And he’s there for the guys. He’s great on the scout team. He’s a great leader. So I wish we’d have been able to get Max in. He’s been great. He understands he’s great. 

“These other five guys, Aaron’s the only one out of eligibility after this year. I’d love to have all four of those guys back if that’s what they choose to do. They’ve won a lot of games. Shoot, we were two or three possessions away from winning the league title against Tennessee. Hopefully, we can go win ourselves a tournament title up in Nashville. But we’ve done a lot of good things with this group. I’d love to get them back, but they’ve all gotta make personal decisions based on what they think is best for themselves. I think all four of them will graduate whether it’s in the spring or the summer, and they’re gonna have to decide what’s best for themselves.”

“Last thing I’ll say because I thank you all for being here, too. The student section wasn’t quite what it’s been here. I know spring break is going on. My daughter goes to school here. I’d like to say thanks to the students that came because it was huge, and they’ve been unbelievably great the entire SEC conference play. The ones that stuck around to cheer us on – assuming those will be the same ones that show up in Nashville because it’s spring break – so anybody that wants to come back early from spring break and give us a big cheering section in Nashville, it’d be great. But thank you to the ones that were here and for anybody else who’s not a student, I thought this place got loud when we needed it to, when we needed stops late. That was big. So just thank you to the fans, thank you to the students for an incredible year at Coleman. We love the Crimson Chaos, and they were great for us all year. Thank you to you guys, too.”

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