Nate Oats previews Alabama's SEC home opener vs. South Carolina

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Alabama men’s basketball team will be back in Coleman Coliseum for the first time since Dec. 23 on Tuesday night when it plays host to South Carolina.

The Crimson Tide (9-5, 1-0 SEC) will look to win its fourth straight against a Gamecocks team that has only lost one game this season and is coming off a 68-62 win over Mississippi State. In what will be Alabama’s first SEC home game of the year, the Tide will look to continue its winning streak – UA hasn’t lost to an SEC team at home since March 2, 2022.

But to keep it alive, the Tide will look to play a full 40 minutes, something it did not do the last time out against Vanderbilt. Facing a South Carolina team that will look to slow down the fast-paced Alabama offense, Nate Oats knows his 2023-24 team is in for a challenge.

Below are highlights from Oats’ press conference plus notes to know on both teams, via UA.

Oats’ opening statement… 

“First home game in SEC play against a tough team. South Carolina has only lost one game. They beat a good Mississippi State team. They’re playing well. They took a lot of transfers, so they’re experienced. (Stephen) Clark, (Ta’Lon) Cooper, BJ Mack, Myles Stute. We called on a couple of them. I think it goes without being said that experience helps you win games in college basketball, and they’re a real experienced group. 

“And they’ve got some scoring. Meechie Johnson, who was a transfer before that – we recruited him a little bit when he was a high school player in Ohio – but him and Mark (Sears) are two of the top three scorers in the SEC. So they’ve got tough guard play. We’re going to have to do a great job defensively. South Carolina is a really good defensive team. They play a lot slower than we do. Their offense is efficient. Their defense is very good. 

“I think they’re top 20 in the country in scoring defense, holding teams down. We’re going to want to get it up and down. They’re going to want to slow it down. We’re going to have to do a good job maybe playing with less possessions with how much they score it down of being super efficient in the possessions we get. And then we’ve got to do a great job on defense.

“We were fortunate enough to escape with a win against Vanderbilt. We’re going to have to play a lot better moving forward to get wins in this league. I think you saw it in the first weekend, there’s some teams playing some really good basketball in this league, and we didn’t play particularly well, but we were fortunate enough to get the win. We’re going to have to play a lot better here tomorrow night.”

Oats on fan turnout for the first SEC home game…

“I hope we get a lot of students. I know the first class is Wednesday, so I think it’s perfect. They got in this weekend or today or tomorrow, they get a good basketball game under their belt before they go to class Wednesday morning. But it’d be great to see the student section packed. It’d be great to have a sellout for our first home SEC game. It’s been a couple of years since we lost an SEC game at home. We didn’t lose one last year. So we need everybody to come out and just get the energy in the building so our players play a little harder. Our players hopefully will be playing with max effort and giving the fans a show that they deserve to see when they come watch us play.”

Oats on Meechie Johnson’s ability to draw fouls…

“He’s great with his shot fakes. He draws fouls on threes – shot fake, get a guy up, go into him. And he drives the ball with some force. Sears maybe drives a little bit with some more physicality, but Meechie is probably a little better at getting guys up in the air on jumpers, like long twos, threes, and our guys got to be disciplined on not buying shot fakes. We’ve had an issue with that in the past, so we’ve got to be very cognizant of the fact that he’s going to shot fake a lot and try to draw fouls and then drive with some physicality and kind of push his way in there. So we’ve got to do a good job of keeping our hands off, not putting our hands and letting him collect fouls.”

RELATED: Nate Oats wants to see more blue-collar competitors in practice

Oats on new players getting acclimated to the SEC…

“I would think by this point in the year, we should be acclimated to playing with each other. But sometimes it looks like maybe we’re not. Now, we had a lot of injuries in the summer, and in the offseason, guys weren’t healthy. We haven’t had a lot of injuries where guys are missing games, but we’ve got guys missing some practices. Now, I’ll say the new guys don’t know what SEC play is all about either. There’s going to be an acclimation period. These conference games are tough games. Like Vanderbilt, according to the NET or KenPom or whatever analytics site you go to, was the worst team in our league. That’s not an easy place to get a win. 

“Stackhouse is a good coach, and they run good stuff. I think our guys realize that. We jumped on them early, up 18 with 10 minutes to go in the first half, and guys thought it was going to be a breeze and then it ends up coming all the way down to the last possession of the game and it’s not a breeze. No games, whether they’re home or on the road – I mean, you saw with Arkansas, who’s been one of the better teams in our team since I’ve got in this league, and they’re at home and took a big L. 

“Conference games are tough games no matter who you play, whether they’re at home or on the road. You look at LSU-Texas A&M, another one. Our guys got to figure that out. There’s no easy games, whether it’s a home game, road game. We made it look easy last year at times, but that’s not the way it typically is. Our guys got to get a little bit more killer instinct, and they’ve got to understand that every possession is going to be a tough possession. As soon as they let their foot off the gas, other teams are going to make a run, and that’s what happened to us Saturday.”

Oats on if Vanderbilt was a wake-up call for new players…

“I hope it’s a wake-up call for everybody, including the returners, because we all contributed to that collapse. We get up 33-15, we’re up 18 and we’re humming along pretty well in the first 10 minutes and then the ball quit moving, guys got a little bit selfish with it, in my opinion, and we didn’t score in the last four minutes of the half. We started driving it into double teams and tight quarters and turning it over. Our 16 turnovers hurt our defense and our offense both. So I hope it’s a wake-up call for everybody that you have to keep playing the right way no matter what the score is because stuff can flip in a hurry.

Oats on Alabama-South Carolina’s common opponent, Clemson…

“Clemson beat us by, I think, eight here, and they only beat South Carolina by five. I believe it was at Clemson, too. We play differently, so it’s hard to get too much from it, but it is the one common one, so you’d want to see what you can get out of it. They’ll post up more than we will, South Carolina will. They obviously play a lot slower, you can see that. They do want to take a lot of threes. We didn’t do a great job with PJ Hall in the post. But we’re going to have to do a lot better job with BJ Mack in the post than we did with PJ Hall. 

“I think we’ve got a better plan knowing our personnel since then. We’ve also gotten a little tougher, hopefully. We’ve also got to do a better job running them off the 3-point line. I felt like we let like a Joe Girard get off, particularly in the second half of that game. Meechie Johnson is not going to be able to just come off ball screens and hit jumpers or we’re going to be trouble like Joe Girard did. 

“We’ve got to do a better job making sure the other team’s best players aren’t the ones beating us. We didn’t do a good job of that against Clemson. Their better players came out and got better than their average and they beat us. We’ve got to keep Meechie Johnson, BJ Mack, Cooper, Stute – Stute can really shoot it – we’ve got to make sure those guys aren’t the ones beating us. We’ve got to make sure that their role players are having to make extra plays if they’re going to beat us.”

NOTES TO KNOW

– The Alabama-South Carolina matchup features the SEC’s No. 1 scoring offense (Alabama, 91.8 ppg) and the No. 1 scoring defense (South Carolina, 63.0 ppg).

– Alabama is looking to start 2-0 in the SEC for the fourth straight season.

– Alabama has scored 1,285 points this season (91.8 ppg), the most any UA team has scored in the first 14 games of the season, surpassing the 2000-01 team (1,176 points). The Crimson Tide owns the No. 1 ranked offense, according to KenPom.

– Mark Sears is one of five players in Division I and the only Power 5 player in the country who has at least 270 points, 30 three-pointers, 50 assists and 60 rebounds this season. Sears ranks No. 1 in the SEC in scoring (19.4 ppg), No. 5 in field goal percentage (53.0), and No. 9 in assists (3.7 apg).

ABOUT SOUTH CAROLINA 

– South Carolina’s four transfers (Stephen Clark, Ta’Lon Cooper, BJ Mack and Myles Stute) have played a combined 430 combined games including 299 starts. 

– Cooper ranks No. 6 in the country and No. 1 in the SEC in assist/turnover ratio (4.3).

– The Alabama-South Carolina matchup features two of the best scorers in the SEC, as Sears ranks No. 1 in scoring and South Carolina’s Meechie Johnson ranks No. 3 (18.2 ppg). 

– The Gamecocks rank No. 18 in the country and No. 1 in the SEC in scoring defense (63.0 ppg). South Carolina is the SEC’s top defensive rebounding team in the SEC, grabbing a league-best 31.4 defensive rebounds per game.

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 $9.99! 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!