Nate Oats praises Mark Sears' mentality amid recent shooting slump

CLEVELAND — Alabama guard Mark Sears hasn’t been his normal self shooting the ball as of late. The unanimous All-American went 1-of-5 in the first round against Robert Morris, part of a larger slump where he’s gone an abysmal 5-of-31 (16 percent) from beyond the arc in his last five games.

It’s not Sears’ first-ever shooting slump in his career, but his head coach believes he’s approached this one a bit differently than he as in the past.

“Listen, I’ve got a lot of respect for Mark late in the year this year because there’s times during the past with his shooting slump, he would have been ready to kind of feel sorry for himself, not fight through it,” head coach Nate Oats said. “Well, I think he’s done an unbelievable job showing how competitive he is, how much he wants to win, how tough he is mentally because yeah, he’s not making shots at the level that he’s used to.”

Sears still found success against the Colonials on Friday, recording 10 assists on the way to a double-double, which was also his fourth game with at least seven assists in his last seven contests.

“He’s still got — like you said, 10 assists, which he got the ball moving, he only scored three points in the first half, never quit playing hard, stayed super locked into the defensive end, kept leading the team, and he ends up getting, whatever it ended up being, 20 plus whatever points,” Oats said.

Sears’ teammates were complimentary as well, including freshman Derrion Reid, who said he’s benefitted greatly from Sears’ leadership as a fifth-year player.

“Mark is a big part of our team being a point guard on the floor and off the floor,” Reid said. “He tells it the way he sees it on the court and off the court when he’s on the bench with us, and stuff like that. So just being able to have a leader like that in our senior squad, fifth-year squad, is good for us young guys.”

Even Sears’ veteran teammates recognize the impact he’s able to have not just from a scoring standpoint, but from a mentality and attitude standpoint.

“Mark is a big-time competitor, as you see in the way he plays,” fifth-year guard Chris Youngblood said. “He kind of sets the tone like competitive-wise. If he’s on, he’s a point guard, so naturally we follow.”

While Sears shooting the ball well from outside is always huge for this team, it’s not necessarily a given. He’s had a couple slumps throughout the year, and currently sits at just 33.5 percent on the season. Despite that, Oats believes this team is capable of success whether Sears shoots it well or not.

“We need him to keep doing the same thing because there’s no guarantee. We’ve tried to build this team with the expectation there’s no guarantee that we shoot the ball at a high level,” Oats said. “We’ve got to build the team to win when three-point shots aren’t dropping, him getting downhill, getting to the free-throw line, distributing the ball to our bigs, I think was big, and it’s what we need to keep doing. Hopefully shots start dropping here for everybody pretty soon.”

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