Nate Oats doesn't hold back after win over South Carolina: 'This SEC team was ready for them'
As the questions came rolling in, a reporter asked Myles Stute a simple, yet loaded question: “Is South Carolina ready for SEC play?”
“I hope they’re ready for us,” Stute said without hesitation back on Dec. 30. “That’s my answer. I hope they’re ready for us.”
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In this case, some would probably forget about this comment or not even know Stute said such a thing. But Alabama head coach Nate Oats clearly remembered what the South Carolina forward said.
After South Carolina suffered a 27-point loss against the Crimson Tide on Tuesday, Oats had a lot to say about the Gamecocks.
“I think Myles Stute had made the comment that the SEC wasn’t ready for South Carolina,” he said. “We made sure we played for our guys. We made the point we’ve been the team that’s been winning the SEC here lately, not South Carolina.”
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At the start of the game, it looked like South Carolina hadn’t skipped a beat since its big win over Mississippi State last Saturday. The Gamecocks went on a 13-3 run to open up and forced a couple of Alabama turnovers.
But throughout the night, Oats said there was a lot of chatter from the South Carolina bench, which he didn’t take kindly to. Rather than go back and forth, the Tide picked up their play on the court and shut the Gamecocks down in the second half.
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“They made the statement the SEC isn’t ready for them. I guess we’ll see if the SEC is ready for them. This SEC team was ready for them,” Oats said.
“They were talking an awful lot during the game. I don’t condone us talking to the other team off the bench, but I heard what their guys were saying right out of the gate. So that quick 13-point run at the beginning of the game didn’t last very long.”
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With a fire building inside, Alabama laid its foot on the gas. The Tide went on a 13-0 run to begin the second half. They also held South Carolina scoreless for more than six minutes before it could score its first points.
“I did think (South Carolina) got a little tired. They’re used to playing so slow, and we ran them up and down a little bit,” Oats said. “They had some guys that were gassed. Our guys said it. They tried to call some timeouts to stem the tide a little bit, but our guys said, ‘They’re tired. They’re ready to crack. Let’s crack them.’ I thought we did a good job. In the past, the coach would have called a timeout after we go on a run and they go on a run. We didn’t do that tonight. I thought they called a timeout, we come out of the timeout, got stops and kept the momentum going our way.”
