Nate Oats praises Mark Sears' selflessness during career-high assist night

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama guard Mark Sears has been playing much better as of late after coming out of an early-season slump, and he may have played his best game of the year against No. 12 Oklahoma last night. Sears scored 22 points, one of his best scoring outputs of the year, but more impressively were his 10 assists, a career-high.

Sears executed the Crimson Tide offense to perfection all throughout the game. He constantly made the right reads regardless of what coverage Oklahoma threw at him. Alabama head coach Nate Oats recognized Sears’ execution, but was even happier with the energy he played with as he got his teammates the ball.

“Mark, double-double with 10 assists. I thought he really had the ball moving. You can see his his energy when his teammates were scoring, which is great,” Oats said. “We need that out of him. He was more excited about getting 10 assists. I mean, I think you saw when he hit (Aden) Holloway for the one three, that was his ninth, and he was all fired up. And he got Jarin (Stevenson) on the roll for his 10th. So I was happy to see that. We talk about ‘Mudita’ – vicarious joy through others success. Well, Mark was really happy for his teammates’ scoring, particularly off his passes tonight. I thought it was good.”

Sears has always been a solid passer, but passing at this level makes the Tide offense even more dangerous than it already was. Defensively, teams constantly double-team Sears, but when he’s able to make the correct read time and time again regardless of coverage, it doesn’t matter when opponents send two to the ball.

Oats acknowledged how much easier it makes things on the rest of the Alabama team when Sears is locked into passing the ball at a high level.

“I think it’ll be good because we got some guys that need guys that generate offense for them a little bit,” Oats said. “They’re going to play off close-outs or play off catch and shoots. And hopefully, him moving the ball like he did, maybe we can get some of the other shooters going, whether it’s Youngblood, Holloway, who’s more than capable of knocking down shots. Labaron (Philon) was 2-of-5 tonight. If we get Jarin going, if Mark keeps moving it like that – he’s so aggressive downhill that you kind of have to help because it’s hard for a lot of guys in this league to guard him one-on-one without fouling.

“So then you bring the help in, well he keeps moving the ball like he did tonight, I think he can make it a lot easier on some of our other guys to get some easy buckets.”

Since Sears started the year shooting ice cold from the floor and even posted a scoreless outing against Illinois back in November, he’s regained the All-American form he was expected to have coming into the season. He’s scored at least 20 points in five of the last six games, and recorded at least five assists in four of those games as well.

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