Nate Oats previews Alabama's SEC opener at Vanderbilt

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Alabama basketball team will open league play this afternoon in Nashville when it faces Vanderbilt at Memorial Gymnasium (2:30 p.m. CT on SEC Network).

The Crimson Tide (8-5) will take on the Commodores (5-8) after back-to-back games of scoring 100-plus points. Alabama has scored 1,207 points this season (92.8 ppg), which is the most any Tide team has scored in the first 13 games, surpassing the 2000-01 team (1,107 points). Alabama also enters its SEC opener with the nation’s top offense, per KenPom.

What has held the Crimson Tide back, according to coach Nate Oats, has been its defense and a lack of a competitive edge at critical times in games against quality opponents this season. As the non-conference portion of the schedule progressed, however, Oats saw improvement on the defensive end of the floor, and he discussed that and more on Friday afternoon.

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

Oats’ opening statement… 

“We’re looking forward to SEC play. We played the non-conference games to get ourselves ready for conference play. I think we’ve prepared ourselves with the schedule we put our guys in as well as anybody in the conference has done. We didn’t have as many quality wins as we’d have liked to have had with the non-conference schedule, but I do think it’s prepared us to play.

“We open on the road at Vandy where we’ve had some tough games. I’ve played up there, this will be my fourth time of playing at Vandy. We’ve won the first three times by an average of six points. They’ve played us tough up there. They’ve been good. Right now, their record may not be as great. I think (Jerry) Stackhouse is one of the best coaches in our league. If you look at his after-timeout sets he draws up, they’re as good as anybody. So they’re going to expose. 

“I told our guys, like, ‘If you make a mistake defensively, if you’re screwing stuff up, they’re going to expose it the next time they get a chance.’ So we’ve got to be locked in on the defensive end. Their backcourt is really good. If we don’t guard – (Ezra) Manjon, I think is one of four SEC players that’s averaging 15.5 points and 3.5 assists. It’s him and (Mark) Sears, Wade Taylor and Sean East, so he’s in a pretty elite company. 

“He’s quick. He gets downhill. We’ve had issues with guys getting in the pain too much, so he’s going to put some pressure on our defense. And then Tyrin Lawrence is obviously really good, too. So they’ve got an experienced backcourt that we’ve got to do a better job guard. But I’m looking forward to playing SEC games. I think we’ve had a good week. Ever since the Arizona game, I think our guys have been fairly locked into defense. I think we’re ready to start playing some SEC games and start playing better on the defensive end.”

Oats on where Alabama has improved the most since Game 1…

“On the defensive end, for sure. I mean, it was the area we needed the most improvement. It’s the area we’ve spent the most time on. I think we’ve been doing a better job keeping the ball out of the lane. We’re trying to do a better job guarding without fouling. I think we’ve been able to do that, but this will be the first high-major team we’ve played since that Arizona game. So can we keep the ball out of the paint, which then helps us guard without fouling. Can we guard without fouling? Can we rebound the ball better? Those have been some huge points of emphasis. I think if we can rebound it better and get stops without fouling, it’ll help our offense even more because we can play in transition even more.”

Oats on being able to break the Memorial Gym curse…

“They told me about that when I got here. … Vanderbilt is kind of a tough place to play, just the way the background is with shooting. It’s just so much different than any other arena in the league. But I don’t really believe in all the curses and stuff. I think you come in, you get your guys ready to play, they play and typically the team that’s most prepared with the best talent on the floor that’s better coaches wins. I think we’ve been fortunate enough to have more talent on the floor those three games we’ve had, and we’ve gotten them to play well enough to get to win. 

“Now, we haven’t always played our best basketball up there, I’ll say that. But I thought last year we played pretty well. But we’ve had some close games up there, some very close games. Games that should not have been probably as closes as they’ve been, but we’ve been fortunate enough to get the wins. And it’s not going to be easy. We’ve been trying to tell our guys this. I would hope that they would know. We’ve lost five games already this year to high-major teams, a high-major team with a very good coach with a great backcourt. You win games in college with good backcourts, experienced backcourts, and that’s what this team has up at Vandy.” 

Oats on having an 8-5 record but still being in a statistically good spot…

“It’s a little frustrating, and I’ve talked to our guys a little about that because the websites that measure efficiency metrics … most of those have us in the top 10. We’ve dominated some quality mid-major opponents very well, but there’s got to be a competitive edge about you that when you’re up nine against Purdue and they’re starting to make a run, you’ve got to get stops and have great possessions. You’ve got to figure out how to win. Like we can’t just have the best offense, have the most efficient offense. No, you’ve got to figure out how to win. 

“You put all this time into become skilled. We’ve got gym rats all over the team. Sears is in this gym as much as anybody, and Aaron (Estrada) is in there as much as Sears. The two of those guards are in there all the time. You don’t shoot it as well as (Latrell Wrightsell), Rylan (Griffen), Sam (Walters), Davin (Cosby), our shooters do without putting a bunch of time in the gym. Our big, Grant (Nelson), is in the gym all the time. We’ve got a multitude of guys in the gym all the time that are really skilled. Our offense is the most efficient offense in the country.

“We have five losses because we don’t compete enough at times in the game when you really – when it’s time to win the game and we don’t compete enough. In our five losses, four out of the five, we’ve had at least a six-point lead in the second half with a 75 percent chance of winning the game and then lost the game. So got to get better leadership. I’ve got to do a better job coaching them at various times in the second half, whether it’s a needed timeout, points of emphasis, having the right combination of guys on the floor that actually care about winning and they’re going to get stops. 

“But we’ve got to compete, we’ve got to learn how to win, we’ve got to do all that better. Efficiency-wise, we’re top 10, top five team in the country but nobody that’s actually judging wins and losses has us in their top 25 even. So we’ve got some work to do as to figure out how to win close games against good teams.” 

Oats on establishing a competitive edge…

“It’s something that I think some guys have it better than others. I mean, you think about the most competitive guys in the history of any kind of sports, athletics. But I also think some of it can be coached. You see certain coaches’ teams are always very competitive. Houston’s got the best. defense in the country. Coach (Kelvin) Sampson’s teams always play hard. We played them twice. We were fortunate to get wins, and I think our teams have been pretty competitive and tough here in the past. 

“This year, for whatever reason, I haven’t done as good a job getting this group to be as competitive as we need to be. So that’s on me, and I’ve got to do a better job. Now, do you know how competitive they are when you recruit them? I think you can somewhat tell. You can’t always tell until you get them here. Some guys have been able to win based on the level they played, whether it’s high school or whether it’s transfers at a lower level with being more talented. 

“I mean like with Brandon (Miller), nobody knew how competitive Brandon was until he got here and had to show how competitive he was, and he showed he was a pretty competitive kid. When we needed to get stops, Brandon was pretty good on defense. People might have questioned his defense before he got here because I think the game came so easy to him in high school, but he competed on the defensive end. Noah Clowney competed hard on the defensive end. 

“We’ve got a bunch of really nice kids, and I’ve got to do a better job making more competitive, tougher, figuring out how to win, be winners because they’re all good kids. We don’t have any guys that are fighting us on what we’re asking them to do. We’ve just got to get more competitive and figure out to win some of these tough games.”

NOTES TO KNOW

– Oats became the fastest coach in program history to reach 100 career wins at Alabama (147 games) with UA’s win over Liberty, surpassing Wimp Sanderson (150 games).

– Alabama has posted the toughest non-conference schedule, as its opponents have compiled a .719 winning percentage, posting a combined 115-45 record, which ranks No. 1 in the nation.

– The Crimson Tide are currently ranked as the highest SEC team (No. 5) in the NET ranking.

– Guard Mark Sears is one of two players in Division I and the only Power 5 player in the country who has at least 250 points, 30 three-pointers, 49 assists and 55 rebounds this season. Sears ranks No. 39 in the nation in scoring (19.3 ppg).

– Alabama is one of two schools in the SEC (Kentucky) that has two players rank in the top 10 in assists per game in Aaron Estrada (No. 7, 4.0 apg) and Sears (No. 9, 3.8 apg).

ABOUT VANDERBILT

– Vanderbilt’s backcourt is one of the most formidable backcourts in the nation in guards Ezra Manjon and Tyrin Lawrence, as the duo has accounted for 33 percent of the Commodores’ scoring (300 of 890 points).

– Manjon has scored in double figures 87 times in his career and is one of just three active SEC players with 85-plus career games in double figures (Antonio Reeves, UK & Johni Broome, AU).

– Vandy is the 10th-youngest program by average age heading into the 2023-24 season and the fifth youngest in the major conferences (Marquette, Kentucky, Arizona, UCLA). The Commodores average 20.12 years old with 12 of VU’s 17 players being underclassmen.

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