Nate Oats stresses need for better rebounding effort moving forward
CLEVELAND — Alabama’s first round NCAA Tournament game against 15-seed Robert Morris was much tight than expected. The Crimson Tide ended up winning the game by nine points, but it trailed the Colonials with seven minutes to go and never felt comfortable until the closing few minutes of the game.
The reason the game was so close? Rebounding.
Robert Morris surprisingly had Alabama’s number on the glass. The Colonials beat the Tide 39-37 on the glass for the game, including a 16-5 advantage on the offensive end, leading to 15 second chance points.
“You’ve got to give them a lot of credit. We knew they’d play tough,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said after the game. “We shot a little higher percentage, there was more offensive boards for them to get, but we didn’t do a good enough job keeping them off the glass. You look at a kid like Dickerson, he had more offensive rebounds than our entire team combined.”
Oats was right. Robert Morris’ Amarion Dickerson, a Cleveland native who had an incredible game in his hometown, grabbed six offensive rebounds on his own compared to Alabama’s five. The Tide had just three players with an offensive rebound in the game: Chris Youngblood, Aiden Sherrell and Grant Nelson.
“We’ve got to be better,” Oats said. “I’m going through circling everybody on the front court that had zero O-boards and I’ve got four guys that play the 4 and 5 for the most part that came up with a zero tonight. That’s not good enough. We’ve got to do better. Then on the other end, shoot, we’ve got to box out. We’ve got to go hit somebody when a shot goes up and go get it.”
Top 10
- 1New
Tip times announced
Sunday NCAA games times, TV revealed
- 2
George Foreman
Boxing legend dead at 76
- 3Hot
Bruce Pearl
Takes jab at Mark Pope
- 4
Joe Lunardi
Parting shot at UNC amid controversy
- 5
Vanderbilt guard
Enters portal right after loss
Get the On3 Top 10 to your inbox every morning
By clicking "Subscribe to Newsletter", I agree to On3's Privacy Notice, Terms, and use of my personal information described therein.
It was an uncharacteristic performance, as Alabama’s only been outrebounded four times total this season. The Tide has outrebounded a number of physical teams who pride themselves on the glass, such as Houston, Texas A&M, Auburn and more.
“That’s the stuff we’ve been stressing, and we’re more than capable of, when we’ve played some of the best rebounding teams in the country,” Oats said. “Houston, Texas A&M, Mississippi State has been traditionally great on the glass, we’ve out-rebounded them. We keep saying it, when we know we need to do it, we do it at a high level. We tried to stress we needed to do it tonight and we got out-rebounded by Robert Morris.
“These guys got to step up every game because if we continue to let this happen, we won’t be playing for too much longer.”
That last point rings especially true considering the Tide’s second round opponent, 7-seed Saint Mary’s. The Gaels rank second in the country in offensive rebounding percentage, creating an intriguing chance for a bounce-back performance on the glass as Alabama looks to go back to the Sweet 16.
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 $11.99! 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!
