Nate Oats' message to Alabama entering brutal 9-game stretch: 'Be where your feet are'

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama basketball is about to embark on the toughest 9-game stretch to end the season of any time in college basketball.

No, seriously.

The 3rd-ranked Crimson Tide’s final nine games are the hardest remaining schedule in the country according to BPI. That schedule begins with two straight road games this Saturday and Tuesday against Arkansas and Texas, followed by a home game against No. 1 Auburn. After that is a road trip to No. 15 Missouri, home games against No. 14 Kentucky and No. 22 Mississippi State, a road game at No. 4 Tennessee, a home game against No. 6 Florida, and closes with a road trip and second meeting with No. 1 Auburn.

If you weren’t counting, that’s seven straight ranked opponents to close the season, three straight top-6 opponents in the last three games, and five of the last nine games being away from Coleman Coliseum.

So how does a team prepare for such a difficult stretch of a schedule? Alabama head coach Nate Oats said the key is not to look at the whole stretch at all.

“I think our deal is, we’ve got a really tough 9-game stretch. If you look at the nine games as a whole, you get yourself in trouble,” Oats said on Friday. “What you’ve got to do is take it one at a time. In order to take it one at a time you’ve got to focus on one possession at a time in the game. The only way to get good at that and practice that is to do it in practice. Let’s focus in here on practice, let’s take practice one possession at a time.”

Alabama is coming off its midweek bye, having not played since Saturday’s win over Georgia. The week off conveniently splits the Crimson Tide’s SEC schedule into a front-half of nine games and a back-half of nine games. Oats said he used the week as a way to get the team fresh for the stretch run.

“We know what the big picture is, and the big picture is we need to get ourselves mentally and physically fresh this week, without getting rusty,” Oats said. “I think as a training staff, strength and conditioning with Henry (Barerra), coaching staff, I think we’ve done a good job of keeping them sharp, keeping our conditioning where it needs to be, while getting healthy. So let’s get healthy, but let’s not look at nine games.”

Alabama is currently 8-1 in SEC play after the first half of the league schedule, trailing 9-0 Auburn by one game. Despite being in second place at the moment, the Tide still controls its destiny for the SEC regular season title with two games against Auburn left on the schedule. But none of that matters if it can’t take care of business against other teams, starting with Arkansas on Saturday night.

“Let’s look at Arkansas,” Oats said. “How do we prepare for Arkansas? We have a great day in practice today. How do we do that? It’s every play, it’s every drill. Be where your feet are. I know it sounds cliché, but that’s what we gotta do. We can’t look at the next four weeks, we have to look at the next one game, and focus on that right now.”

Not a member, Alabama fans? Join BOL today!

Have you subscribed to BamaOnLine.com yet? You can sign up for ONE MONTH of premium access to our Alabama coverage for just $11.99! Be able to read all of BOL’s premium articles and nuggets covering Alabama sports and recruiting and also join thousands of other Crimson Tide fans around the globe on the BOL Round Table message board! CLICK HERE!