Nate Oats assesses Alabama's rim protection ahead of matchup with Creighton

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Creighton poses a unique challenge for Alabama basketball in tomorrow night’s game, as the Bluejays’ best player, Ryan Kalkbrenner, is one of the best big men in all of college basketball.

Alabama’s rim protection this season has been far from as bad as it was last year, but it has still left some to be desired due to a number of factors including foul trouble and misses assignments. Ahead of the matchup with Creighton, Alabama head coach Nate Oats assessed the Crimson Tide’s rim protection to this point in the season.

“When Cliff [Omoruyi] has played, he’s given us good rim protection. We’ve got to be better, but it’s been better than last year, for sure,” Oats said. “I also think Aiden Sherrell as he gets more comfortable could get more minutes, provide some solid rim protection. One guy that’s really come out of nowhere with it is Mo Dioubate. Some of the blocks he had when we were in Vegas, the Houston game, he’s done a pretty good job. I think Jarin [Stevenson] and Grant [Nelson] can also provide some of that rim protection for us.”

Omoruyi was brought in as one of the most highly-coveted transfers in the country this offseason, with the primary goal of being a rim protecting force to anchor the Alabama defense. Last season he had the third-highest block rate in the country, but he hasn’t hit those peaks this season through nine games.

Omoruyi currently averages 1.4 blocks per game, still a solid number, but limited by him averaging more fouls and less minutes per game than he did the past few years at Rutgers. Oats also attributes some of Omoruyi’s lower stats to him adjusting to a much different system in Tuscaloosa compared to what he was playing, and playing against much tougher competition in the non-conference.

“That was one of the big things we brought Cliff in for, he’s been in a little bit different system, played some tougher teams. I think he was third-best block-rate in the country last year. Their schedule was a little different in the non-conference than ours was,” Oats said. “I think he’s been good, trending towards a lot better than good, but we’ve got room to improve still there.”

Kalkbrenner will be an extremely difficult matchup for Omoruyi in this game. He currently leads the Bluejays in both points (17.3) and rebounds (8.4) this season with an insane season-high of 49 points in the opener. In last season’s 3-point loss to Creighton, Alabama gave up 19 points on 9-of-11 shooting to Kalkbrenner.

“I didn’t think we did a very good job on him last year,” Oats said. “He’s big, he’s bigger than anybody we’ve got on our team. If he gets it deep, you’re in some trouble. Part of us getting Cliff, and obviously bringing in Aiden, is we can guard the post 1-on-1 better than we did last year.”

Alabama’s two primary post defenders on Kalkbrenner in that game, Nick Pringle and Mohamed Wague, both fouled out in a combined 31 minutes of play. The last two times Alabama played a truly dominant big man this season, it lost both games. Oregon’s Nate Bittle had 19 points in Las Vegas, while Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn scored 26 in Alabama’s first loss of the season.

“We’ve had some issues guarding the post, which as a staff we’ve talked about,” Oats said. “One, we don’t guard the post much in practice much at all because that’s not the way we play, so we’ve got to do a better job stressing it. Which we have over these last 10 days off. We’ll have different options available to us based on what they’re doing.”

Oats knows he’s going to need a much better effort than that from Omoruyi in this one.

“Ideally, Cliff plays great, like we planned on him playing in the post, and he gets a few more minutes,” Oats said. “If he’s not able to guard him 1-on-1, we’ll have to go to some other options, whether it be a matchup, doubles, whatever we have to try to do. I think Cliff’s gonna have to step up to the challenge and play a little bit better.”

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