Nate Oats compliments Calipari and says Kentucky found its best offensive group vs. Alabama

Alabama scored 95 points on 57 percent shooting from the field in Rupp Arena. Still, the Crimson Tide gave up 117 and lost to Kentucky by 22 on Saturday, leaving Nate Oats frustrated by his team’s fight on the road. Oats opened his postgame press conference honestly, saying, “Kentucky was ready to play tonight and we weren’t. Cal had his guys ready to go. I didn’t. They looked great. We looked awful.” 

Defensive intensity and costly turnovers were on Oats’ long list of frustrations from the loss to the Wildcats. He noted that Kentucky scored 29 points off of Alabama’s 16 turnovers, plus another 16 points in transition. “So you’re at 45 points before you even give your halfcourt defense a chance to get a stop,” he said.

Oats called out the Crimson Tide’s effort, too. “Thought our effort stunk,” he admitted.

Oats on Calipari’s changes and a new lineup

When he wasn’t naming all that went wrong with his team, Nate Oats spoke highly of John Calipari and some of the Kentucky players who played well on Saturday.

“Cal’s done a really good job kind of fixing the shooting, the issues he’s had in the past. You know, he recruited some shooters. They got some shooters and he had some other guys today, you know, Justin Edwards goes for four and he hadn’t been shooting it all that great. We let Dillingham, Sheppard, and Reeves all shoot over 50 percent too. so, you know, he’s done a good job getting his roster fixed to where they’ve got good shooting. He spaced the floor out.”

On how Kentucky should play moving forward, Oats indirectly suggested that Calipari should continue to play the offensive lineup of Dillingham, Reeves, Sheppard, Edwards, and Zvonimir Ivisic, the group that scored 28 points in six minutes.

“Those three guards are obviously uber-talented; shoot it, score it,” he said. “Edwards goes 10 of 10, Z goes 7 of 11, and you got three really talented guards that can all pass, dribble, and shoot, like, that’s a really good offensive group.”

Oats guessed that Kentucky set some new records against his team’s defense, calling the scoring and shooting numbers absurd. He thinks the Alabama game helped Calipari out.

“I’m guessing that maybe that group doesn’t play as much together because they’re a poor defensive group, but if they’re going to score every time down, it doesn’t matter. They’re hitting 3s every other possession and scoring every time down… I’m guessing it was good enough to probably look at playing that lineup more. We probably helped Cal out a little bit tonight figuring some lineups out that work.”

It sounds like Oats is a fan of Kentucky’s small-ball lineup after watching the Cats hang 117 points on the SEC’s first-place team. Watch his postgame press conference for more of his thoughts on Kentucky and Alabama.