Nate Oats differentiates this year's late-season slide from how last season ended

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama is in the midst of a late-season slide, one that’s not all too unfamiliar in recent memory. The Crimson Tide has lost four of its last six games as the regular season has just one game remaining, all coming to top-15 teams.

Just a year ago, Alabama endured a very similar slide. That team lost four of its final six games before the NCAA Tournament, including three out of five regular season games and a blowout loss in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals. Of course, that was before the team quickly righted the ship and made a run to the Final Four.

Following Alabama’s home loss to Florida on Wednesday night, Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats was asked if he felt like the situations were similar.

“I thought guys quit last year at times. I was very frustrated with our effort in some of those games late. I don’t think that’s the case here,” Oats said. “It looked to me like we didn’t have enough pop, but we fought hard. What did we cut it to, four there late? I told them at the timeout, shoot, we were up four with 30 seconds to go at Tennessee and lost the game. We’ve been in this situation on the other side. So I thought they continued to fight.”

Looking at the scores of the two skids, Oats has a point.

In 2024, the losses to end the season included allowing 117 points in a 22-point road loss to Kentucky (KenPom No. 23), a 7-point home loss to Tennessee (KP No. 5), an 18-point road loss to Florida (KP No. 26) and another 14-point loss to Florida in the SEC Tournament.

Comparing that to this season, you have a 9-point loss to Auburn (KP No. 2), a 12-point loss at Missouri (KP No. 12), a 3-point loss on a buzzer-beater to Tennessee (KP No. 5), and a 5-point loss to Florida (KP No. 4).

Of course losses are losses, but these losses are contextually different. These losses aren’t blowouts, and they’re to better teams. Alabama’s wins during this slide have also come against better teams, comparing Kentucky and Mississippi State this year (KP Nos. 16 and 32), to Ole Miss and Arkansas last year (KP Nos. 86 and 108).

Oats fully believes this current team has no quit in them, and that a different version of them will be shown very soon.

“I would anticipate us being a lot better Saturday at Auburn. I don’t think this group’s gonna have quit in them,” Oats said. “I don’t really have answers to why we didn’t have pop kind of throughout a lot of the game. But they at least fought and didn’t want to quit. I think we got a bunch of pretty high-character kids, young men that they’re gonna keep fighting, where I thought last year, we kind of succumbed to some give-in a little bit, if you will. I didn’t think we had that tonight.

“We just didn’t quite have the pop we needed to tonight.”

Alabama’s players know what needs to change as well.

“We just gotta continue to come out and play with energy,” guard Mark Sears said. “I feel like they played with more energy than us in the second half. We just gotta do a better job with that, and we’ve just gotta hold each other accountable.”

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