Nate Oats 'irritated' with how Alabama gave up lead late to Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Disaster nearly struck for Alabama basketball in Bud Walton Arena on Saturday night, as the Crimson Tide watched an 18-point lead with seven minutes to go quickly dissipate, turning into a close game in the final minutes.

Alabama was outscored 26-12 over the final seven minutes of the game, including a 12-0 run by Arkansas over a 2-minute stretch that saw the lead get down to just one possession. Though the Crimson Tide ultimately held on and left Fayetteville with a win, head coach Nate Oats wasn’t too pleased with the way the team struggled to close the game out after building the big lead.

“We’ve shown these guys all kinds of end-of-game situations from different teams throughout the country this year,” Oats said. “We gotta realize an 18-point lead, we’re not playing just to win the game. And we almost lost the game after being up 18. We’re not playing to win the game. We’re playing to get better on every possession. And when you start playing the scoreboard and you don’t play to get better on every possession, that’s the stuff that happens to you.”

During the run the Razorbacks made to cut down the lead, Alabama had a number of bad turnovers and missed shots that kept the team from being able to close it out more easily. It was a sharp 180 from how Alabama had played up to that point in the half, having outscored Arkansas 33-21 to get the lead as high as 18 points to begin with.

“So I’m a little irritated because we played really well for 30 minutes,” Oats said. “We got the turnovers fixed to start the second half, and then, again, I got to go back and look, but I feel like our guys just relaxed. We thought we were up 20. … We come out. And the one time out, we came out of, they scored about three or four. I had to call the one timeout. They scored three straight possessions. Another timeout, they came out, they scored 5-of-6, I believe. 

“We’re not tuned in enough on the defensive end like we need to be in. And it’s a little frustrating to me, to be honest with you.”

Still, Oats made a point to praise what Alabama did to build the lead in the first place, just wanting to see his team maintain that level of play through the entirety of the game.

“I thought to build the lead, we forced them to take the shots we want them to take,” Oats said. “We got the shots we wanted to and didn’t turn it over. That was the issue in the first half. We had so many turnovers. So to build the lead, we didn’t really turn it over much in the second half, got the right shots. And then we had some turnovers there after we had built an 18-point lead. We missed a couple shots we should have made. We got to make free throws. We had some turnovers there when they were on their run.

“And we didn’t do a very good job guarding some of their actions. They just got downhill. We didn’t have the help where it was supposed to be. We missed some switches we were supposed to have. I thought they were starting to run out of energy, and it looked to me like maybe we ran out of some energy. And maybe I gotta have some other guys in there. Some guys were tired. I don’t know. But I’m gonna have to look at that film on that last kind of 10 minutes of the game and see what happened.”

Alabama has another challenge in front of it in just a few days, as the team will play straight to Austin to begin preparing for Texas on Tuesday night. The game will tip off at 8 p.m. CT on ESPN as the Crimson Tide looks to secure its 10th win in SEC play on the season.

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