What Alabama's Nate Oats said about facing Tennessee Saturday in Knoxville

What Alabama coach Nate Oats said before the sixth-ranked Crimson Tide faces No. 5 Tennessee on Saturday afternoon (4 Eastern Time, ESPN) at Food City Center in Knoxville:

Opening Statement

“So we’ve got three straight games against top-five opponents (at No. 5 Tennessee, No. 3 Florida and at No. 1 Auburn) and we haven’t played particularly well here (at Tennessee) in the past. So this can be tough matchup to start this three-game stretch. They’re good. They’re got the number one defense in the country. They’re tough, they’re physical. We’re going to have to handle their physicality here a lot better than we did last year. Take care of the ball. So, I mean, this is typical of a Tennessee team since I’ve been in the league. 

They’re great on defense. They’re tough. They’ve got some elite scorers that you can have to take care of. Chaz Lanier is one of the best shooters in the country and (Zakai) Zeigler is leading the league in assist. So they’ve got very good players on the offensive and they’ve got a great defensive system that’s tough to score on. 

“So we’ve got our hands full. We know we’re more than capable if we bring the right mentality and take care of the ball and bring a defensive mindset for 40 minutes. Looking forward to seeing how our group responds and I think we’ve been playing better here lately. I think we’re getting our legs back up under (Chris) Youngblood is getting more comfortable making shots. I think Cliff (Omoruyi) is starting to play his best basketball. We got a lot of guys playing their best basketball of the year right now.”

His Alabama teams being held under 75 points in every game against Tennessee, what makes it difficult to impose his offense against that defense

“Yeah, I didn’t realize it’s that stat, but it’s not shocking. They’ve done a really good job with us. Even in games we’ve won, they haven’t necessarily been high-scoring affairs. I mean, they’re physical. They get into you. They make cutting hard, they guard the ball well. We like to get in the paint, draw help, spray the ball. They don’t necessarily need help all the time because they’re so physical on the ball, then their off-ball cutting, they just kind of stand you up. They’re, shoot, they got the number one defense in the country this year and they’re usually top five in the country every year.” 

Ramadan beginning Saturday and Alabama forward Mouhamed Dioubate not being able to eat until the sun goes down

“Yeah, so Amanda is our nutritionist so it mainly affects him in that way because he can’t eat till sundown. So she’s been trying to get him gradually worked into having meals between sundown and sunup. And tomorrow I think will be the first game where he can’t eat after sun comes up. So it’s going to have to get himself some good meal before the sun comes up. I just told Amanda don’t don’t wake me up when you wake Mo up. He’ll be up before the rest of us to make sure he is eating. But he seemed to handle it pretty well last year. This’ll be a game — I think it’s four o’clock (start) here, I don’t know when the sun goes down here — but he may not be able to eat until after the game in this one. There were some games last year in the NCAA Tournament where he was able to eat partway through the game. But seemed like he had his energy pretty well, seemed like he handled it pretty well. So Amanda’s got a pretty good grasp of that.”

Chris Youngblood hitting seven 3-pointers in both games against Mississippi State, but not hitting more than three in any other game

“Some of that is the way they guard us versus the way some other people guard us. They’re a heavy collapse team and if you collapse a lot, the ball is able to get sprayed around a little bit more and he is able to get free. So if we can force some help with some of these other teams a little bit more and get him some open catch-and-shoots, maybe we run him off some more actions. 

“We’ll have to see (who Tennessee matches) up on him. Tennessee’s got two elite defensive guards in Zeigler and (Jahmai) Mashack. So I’m not sure who they’ll choose to put those guys on but, we may have to look to go to somebody other than the two that those guys are guarding. Or get those two open with some screening actions. But it’d be nice to get him some more shots against some other teams, I agree, because he’s making them at a pretty high clip right now.”

What Alabama’s Grant Nelson and Jarin Stevenson need to do to play their best basketball right now

“I think Jarin is, to be honest with you. Somebody sent me a stat not too long ago, since we kind of took him out of the starting lineup the last three games to kind of get him to play with more creators. He’s shooting 63% from the field, he’s shooting 57% from three, his effective field goal is 88%. He is 1.3 points per catch on his usage of possessions compared to 0.9 in the 25 games prior. 

“So I think Jarin’s been pretty efficient these last three games. Maybe it’s not super high production, but you got (Mark) Sears who is second in the league in scoring I believe right now, and Youngblood, LaBaron (Philon), we’ve got some guys that are, (Aden) Holloway, that are kind of wired to score. What we need Jarin to do is be super efficient in his shots, which he has been. And we need him to be an elite defender and rebounder. So I think Jarin’s playing pretty well. Maybe we could get him a few more shots with his efficiency. 

“Grant’s got to get healthier. I think we’re starting to see him get healthier and get more explosive. He’s got to get downhill to the rim. The dunk he had against Mississippi State, where some teams kind of over help off of him and he can kind of get going on a go-catch, we call it, downhill the rim. But we do need Grant to be a little more aggressive, a little bit more efficient in his minutes. And his turnovers, some games he has been a little inconsistent with taking care of the ball, need him take care of the ball a little better too.”

If playing Grant Nelson with different Alabama guard combinations could create more opportunities for him

“We pretty much played Jarin with two guards, when you’re talking about Sears, LaBaron and Holloway. And we played Grant pretty much with two guards the whole time anyways. Grant’s got to be healthy enough to get in the gym to shoot to where he is confident to knock down shots. Jarin is shooting 57% from three the last three games and Grant is not as comfortable shooting like that because he hasn’t been able to get in the gym as much as we need him to. So I think more of it is Grant being healthy to where he can get in the gym and put reps up and get shot a little more comfortable. 

“But we are finding some cutting opportunities that our guards got to find them on. I think that’s an area, because he can finish at the rim real well, so we can maybe play them with like our starting group. You’ve got Sears and LaBaron to create, you got Youngblood to stretch the floor. If Grant can find some more cuts, I think he can get himself to be a little bit more efficient.” 

Preparing to face a player like Tennessee point guard Zakai Zeigler who plays well on both offense and defense

“Yeah, I mean he’s leads the league in assists. So he gets into paint. You’ve got be able to stay in front of him. But on the defensive end, I mean, if you try to attack him to get him in foul trouble, because you want him out because he’s so good on offense, all of a sudden you put yourself in some predicaments, because he’s so quick on the ball and plays so hard. He might be turning the ball over. So we got to be smart with how we try to attack him. I mean, depending on who he ends up guarding. But he’s one of better players in this league and he’s been that way for a few years. So when you’re as good a two-way guys as he is, he makes it difficult because you don’t want to go at — some of these really good offensive players, you just keep going at them. They either refuse to guard and you can get easy buckets or they foul and you get them on the bench. 

“Well, Zeigler is not really somebody you want to go at much because you end up getting a bad possession out of it or turning it over. So try to keep him out of actions as much as possible when he is on defense, but then on offense you got to really do good job staying in front of him. And if he’s blowing by people, he finds everybody on the assist. He’s also scoring the ball, I think he’s averaging over 18 in the last five games. So him and Lanier the two biggest keys on their offensive end and then him and Mashack are by far the two best defenders on their defensive end. So he’s their best two-way guy for sure. And he is going to be in the conversation for defensive player of the year in the league again. So I got a lot of respect for him.”