Nate Oats previews Alabama's ACC/SEC Challenge matchup vs. Clemson

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – No. 23 Alabama will play host to Clemson tonight at Coleman Coliseum in the inaugural ACC/SEC Challenge. The Crimson Tide (5-1) is coming off a 1-1 showing in the Emerald Coast Classic and will look to earn its 20th straight home win against the Tigers.

But Clemson enters the non-conference matchup with a perfect, 5-0 record after topping Alcorn State on Friday, where center PJ Hall scored a career-high 29 points. Hall is one of the players coach Nate Oats unpromptedly mentioned Monday ahead of the 8:30 p.m. CT tip.

Tonight’s game will feature two of the country’s top offenses, as the Tide sits atop KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency rankings (122.5 points scored per 100 possessions). Meanwhile, the Tigers are 35th (113.1). But Oats has been preaching defense as Alabama ranks 61st in defensive efficiency, according to KenPom, at 98.3 after its first six games.

Most of his Monday press conference focused on the defensive end of the floor. Below is a full transcript of everything Oats said in advance of Tuesday’s home game against Clemson.

Oats’ opening statement…

“Sorry I’m a little late. Practice went a little long. We’re trying to get the defense figured out. The weekend didn’t go as we wanted. We would have liked to come away 2-0. Ohio State is a good team. I think they’re going to prove to be a little better than what some people thought. But our defense is still nowhere close to where we need it to be. I think everyone’s seen our offense is good enough to win every game if our defense was where it’s supposed to be. So until we get our defense to where it needs to be, that’s going to be the main point of emphasis moving forward. We’ve got to do a better job keeping the ball out of the lane. I thought we got beat off the dribble too much, we let the ball get inside too much. 

“They’ve got the best-returning post player probably in the ACC in PJ Hall, so he’s going to be a problem for us. They’ve got the two top returning leading scorers in all of the ACC with PJ and Joe Girard, so we’re going to have a tough matchup on the perimeter in Girard, tough matchup in the post in PJ Hall. Our frontcourt, our backcourt both are going to have to be much better. Shoot, they went to the transfer portal and have some veteran guys. I think the four transfers they got coming in average 48 points a game combined. They returned 52 points. I mean, that’s 100 points of production that this team has. They’re good, very good. They’re experienced and we’re going to have to play significantly better to have a chance to win at home here tomorrow.”

Oats on Rylan Griffen… 

“I think he’s really locked into the right stuff. We kind of really challenged him after that TCU scrimmage. He wasn’t very good on defense at all that game, and I just don’t think his head was quite where it needs to be defensively. After that game, he’s really been all about the right stuff for about a month now. So I was really happy to see him play well on offense. You like for the guys that are about the right stuff to get rewarded. I think when you just focus in and lock in on playing the right way and you’re really talented on offense, you got to put the work in.

“You can’t not be a good offensive player and just focus on defense, you’re still not going to be a good offensive player. But if you put the work in like a lot of our guys have and I think you’re focused on the right thing, I think it just comes and it flows and you’re not pressing, and you end up playing really well on offense. I think that’s been the way it’s been for us around here for a while now. So I think Rylan showed the benefits of that finally happening. I think he’s a great shooter. He’s going to continue to put the work in outside of practice. I anticipate him continuing to play well on both sides of ball as long as he stays locked in the defensive side of ball.”

Oats on players receiving the defensive message vs. taking time to improve…

“I think it’s both. I think you see, though, sometimes a guy can flip it from one game to the next. I didn’t think (Mark) Sears was great against Ohio State. I thought he got burned a little bit. We told him if we’re going to be any good this year, he’s got to be significantly better. Without a practice between the games, obviously, you’re playing back-to-back days, he turned the whole thing around. I thought he was maybe our best perimeter defender against Oregon. So I think sometimes it’s just guys got to determine that they’re going to take the defensive end seriously, that it’s a big deal to them, that it’s important for us to win that they play well on defense and they can just change their mindset.

“As soon as we get about eight or nine guys with that mindset, I think we’ll be pretty good. I thought we had a good practice today. I’m going to keep saying it and we’re going to try to keep coaching it, but you’ve got to get seven, eight, maybe nine guys locked in on defense, you got a chance to be good. We’re not going to play all 11 guys every game, but the guys that – and some of the guys want to be good that are freshmen, and they just like they need more reps. They’ve got to get more reps. Some of the veteran guys, they’ve just go to determine that they want to be great on defense and get locked into it.”

Oats on how the search for a rim protector is coming along…

“We’ve told our guys when we were third in the country in defense those two years, three years ago and then last year, we weren’t perfect. We were far from perfect. But our guys played really hard. We covered for each other’s mistakes. So we didn’t have great rim protection with (Alex) Reese and (Jordan) Bruner, particularly that year, but Herb Jones would come from the backside and clean up all kinds of mistakes for everybody. Last year, we had kind of two guys that did that a lot. Charles (Bediako) was a great rim protector. (Noah) Clowney would also come over and clean up a lot of mistakes.

“So we’re trying to get both. I think Mo Wague is showing some signs. He had some great blocks. Grant Nelson had four blocks. I don’t know what the official stats had him for, but we go back and rechart everything. He had four blocks against Oregon. I think Grant can give us that. I think Mo Wague can definitely start giving us some of that. Nick (Pringle) showed it for a couple games there. He didn’t have any blocks the last game. I’m not sure he had any over the weekend, to be honest with you.

“We’ve got to get more consistent rim protection. I think Grant can give us that. We need more out of Jarin Stevenson. I think he can play a lot more like Clowney did for us, and he’s young and needs to feel it a little bit more. I think he’s a lot better than what I think he even knows, to be honest with you. I think once he sees himself do it a little bit like, ‘I can do this,’ I think he can really be there because he’s athletic as Clowney was. He’ just got to have more instincts and go get it. But Grant showed he, had four blocks last game. Mo Wague is super reactive and wants to be great. I think he can give us some of that. I think Jarin can give us a little bit more. I think we can get it. It’s not there yet, though.”

Oats on newcomers struggling to learn the scheme vs. dedicating themselves to defense…

“Yeah, so it is both. I mean, we’re playing a similar scheme to last year. We don’t quite have Charles, so we’ve adjusted it a little bit. Obviously, you see us up in the ball more with our guards. Once we get in a halfcourt, it’s very similar to what we had last year. We’re trying to wear some people out a little bit more than we did last year. We’re trying to use our depth in the backcourt a little bit more, try to wear some other teams out, put pressure on them, get them to play late in the shot clock. If you look at just the high-major teams, I believe we’re first in offensive pace of play and third-slowest in defensive pace of play, which when we’ve been really good, other teams – if you’re really good on defense, other teams take a long time to score on you. So we’ve got it to where they’re taking a while.

“We’re not doing a great job closing the possession out once we get in the last 10 seconds of the clock, whether it’s a late breakdown, whether it’s giving up an O board after we force a tough shot. We’re not doing a great job closing the last 10 seconds of the shot clock. So we worked on that today in practice. We worked on trying to keep the ball out of the paint by not giving up blow-bys, giving a little bit of added extra help. We did get back to some drills we haven’t done since before we played games, like just close-out drills, trying to learn the first basic defensive fundamentals. You can’t have a great team defense if you don’t have really good individual defenders. It’s not going to work that way.

“You can’t get beat on every blow-by and expect to be in a rotation on every possession and be any good. We’ve got to do a way better job guarding the ball initially, one-on-one, taking some pride in your own matchup in front of you and we worked a lot on that today. And then we’ve got to quit letting the ball get the post all the time. I mean, obviously, you’re not going to be able to full-front everybody and give up lobs, but we got to push catches out. And they’ve got one of the best post players in the country and PJ Hall, so our bigs are going to have to step up. We worked a lot of defense today. Did not work a whole lot of offense.”

Oats on what he wants to see out of the crowd for the ACC/SEC Challenge… 

“This game means a lot. We need the crowd to show up big. This is a big home win. I told our guys we’ve done a pretty good job here the last three years of getting our NCAA Tournament seeding up. Last year, we were the No. 1 overall seed. Year before that, I believe we were the top-six seed, which I think would be the 21st-best team in the country, according to the committee. And then we were the top two seed before that. So we’ve been like the best team, 21st and the fifth-best team. That comes from getting quality, non-conference wins in addition to playing well in your conference. So this is going to be a, if we can get the win, it would be high quality, non-conference win.

“Clemson is a very good team that’s going to win a lot of games in the ACC. If we don’t play well, we’re not winning this game. It’s going to take a colossal effort to play well. We need unbelievable crowd support. We need our home-court advantage. The first year of the ACC/SEC Challenge, we’ve been against the Big 12. Clemson, to me, has been an underrated ACC team. We’ve only played them once since I’ve been here, and we’re 0-1. They beat us. I think Coach (Brad) Brownell’s teams are always well-coached, they’re well-prepared. They play hard. They’re tough, they’re physical. They’re in every game. And he’s a good coach and has them prepared for late-game situations. So we’re going to have to play, we’re going to have to play well and we’re going to need every bit of the home-court advantage as we can possibly get tomorrow.”

Oats on if it’s discouraging to have guards as two of five leading rebounders…

“It’s positive and negative. It’s great that our guards are rebounding it because then that helps, especially defensive rebounding, it helps get you in the break a lot faster. If Sears gets it, we’re out in a break faster. If (Aaron) Estrada gets it, we’re out in the break quicker. We even have Grant Nelson pushing it as one of our leading rebounders. But we need our bigs to rebound the ball better. Mo Wague coming off the surgery in the offseason just hasn’t had enough reps to get – the more comfortable he gets in the system, the more I think we can play him. When he gets more minutes, I think he can be a great rebounder for us.

“I believe he’s the best offensive rebounder when you look at offensive rebounding rate in the country among high-major teams last year. So he can rebound the ball, he will rebound it. We’ll get him some more minutes. hopefully here coming up. We need Jarin to rebound the ball a lot better for us. We need our bigs to rebound the ball a little better. But it’s good when your guards can out-rebound the other team’s guards like we’ve been doing. It helps you get out in the break a little bit faster. So we challenge our bigs, keep getting our guards to rebound. We did a good job against Oregon, who was a pretty good rebounding team. It was 40-28. We didn’t do a very good job against Ohio State. We beat Oregon. We lost to Ohio State. Rebounding, I think it was Pat Riley, rebounds equal rings. If you’re trying to win championships, you better learn how to rebound the basketball.”

NOTES TO KNOW

– Alabama has a 19-game winning streak at home, which ranks as the second-longest streak in the country. During Alabama’s winning streak, UA has won by double-digits 15 times and by an average of 26.8 points per contest at home. UA has won 18 straight non-conference games at Coleman Coliseum (last defeat was vs. Western Kentucky on Dec. 19, 2020).

– In its first six games of the season, Alabama has scored 587 points (97.8 ppg) which ranks No. 1 In the country and the most in program history through the first six games of the season, surpassing the 1956-57 team (583 points).

– The Tide is averaging 97.8 points per game, which ranks No. 1 in the country. Alabama is shooting an SEC-best 54.1 percent from the field and No. 3 in the country. UA has an effective field goal percentage of 55.8, which ranks No. 3 in the country.

– Mark Sears ranks No. 1 in the SEC in scoring (20.3 ppg), No. 3 in field goal percentage (61.0), and No. 5 in assists (4.2 apg). Alabama is one of two schools in the SEC (Vanderbilt) that has two players averaging 17 points or more per game (Sears’ 20.3 ppg, Aaron Estrada’s 17.0 ppg). 

– Oats is 2-3 against ACC opponents during his tenure at Alabama.

ABOUT CLEMSON

– Clemson added four transfers who have played a combined 393 college basketball games over 14 seasons of experience. The transfers have a total of 3,978 points, 1,469 rebounds and 754 assists. Clemson added Joseph Girard III (Syracuse), Jack Clark (NC State), Jake Heidbreder (Air Force) and Bas Leyte (UNCG) through the transfer portal.

– Head coach Brad Brownell, now in his 14th season at Clemson, has led the Tigers to the sixth-most overall wins (125) amongst ACC teams since 2017-18. 

– Per StatsPerform research, Clemson brought back the third-most points per game (2022-23 season) on its roster heading into the 2023-24 campaign. Clemson returns 52.1 points per game and added 48.0 points per game from its transfer portal class. With the return of PJ Hall and the addition of Girard, the Tigers return the top two scorers in ACC play from last season.

HOW TO WATCH

The Crimson Tide’s seventh game of the season is scheduled to tip off at 8:30 p.m. on ESPN with Jon Sciambi Jay Williams and Angel Gray on the live call from Coleman Coliseum.

Game links: WATCH | LISTEN | STATS

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