Nate Oats gauges Alabama team morale after third straight loss

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Alabama men’s basketball team is coming off its third loss in a row, albeit to yet another top-10 team. The Crimson Tide lost to Purdue in Toronto (92-86), Creighton in Omaha (85-82) and Arizona in Phoenix (87-74) to drop to 6-5 on the season.

As Alabama gets set to host Eastern Kentucky (4-7) in its final game before the holidays, head coach Nate Oats assessed the team’s morale after three losses against elite competition.

“I think the guys are confident knowing that we’re one of the best teams in the country for large parts of the game,” Oats said Friday. “There’s all kinds of different sites you can go to to look at analytics. The sites that measure efficiency, if you looked at total possessions over the course of the year from everybody in the country, most of those sites have us still top 10 in the country. 

“But sites that are measuring more wins and losses, we’re not close in the polls. We’re not getting any votes anywhere because we haven’t figured out a way to win games.”

Alabama is still among the top 10 in NCAA’s NET rankings, hanging in at No. 9, and remains No. 1 in the nation in offensive efficiency, according to KenPom. But Oats said the Tide defense is “nowhere close to where it needs to be,” as UA checked in at No. 96 on KenPom. Improving there, as well as limiting fouls and securing rebounds, are points of emphasis.

So is showing more grit and fight, Oats said, particularly in the final 8-12 minutes of games.

“We’ve looked at our numbers,” Oats said. “The first 28 minutes of the game, we’ve literally been one of the top 5-10 teams in the country. The last 12 minutes of the games, we’ve completely fallen apart. And if you really break the numbers down, it’s bad. We go from one of the best to one of the worst teams in the country from the first 28 minutes to the last 12. 

“So these guys have to figure out ways to win games when they’re a little bit fatigued and the other team is fatigued, as well.”

Oats continued by sharing a quote from legendary football coach Vince Lombardi.

“‘Fatigue makes cowards of us all,’” Oats said. “We’ve got to be a little tougher when we feel fatigued and we’ve got to show some determination, some fight, some competitiveness, some winning characteristics when it comes time to win these games after we’ve built up a lead. Four of our five losses, we’ve had at least a 6-point lead in the second half and couldn’t maintain it. 

“So I think they’re confident in knowing that we can be one of the best teams, but we’ve got to prove to ourselves that we know how to win these tight games.”

From players to coaches to fans, Alabama is disappointed – and even frustrated – that it went 0-3 over a brutal stretch of games away from Coleman Coliseum. It will look to right the ship on Saturday, Dec. 23, against EKU, and Oats is using a former team as motivation.

“We made the point to them today that three years ago when we won the SEC regular season and tournament both, we lost to Western Kentucky about the same time here,” Oats said. “These five teams we’ve lost to are not Western Kentucky. Purdue is No. 1 in the country. Arizona has been No. 1 in the last two weeks, Creighton has been a top 10 team, Clemson is a top 10 team and Ohio State is one of those teams in the Big Ten. 

“So we’ve lost the five really good teams. But we have lost. We’ve got to figure out ways to win. So I think we’re a little discouraged, a little frustrated, a little disappointed with the fact that we haven’t been able to come up with one, but there’s also three years ago after we lost to Western Kentucky, I think we started the league 10-0. 

“We can come in, get two wins going into league play, get on a run in league play and take off from there. So that’s the plan and what we’re trying to accomplish right now.”

Saturday’s home game against the Colonels will tip-off at 3 p.m. CT on SEC Network.

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