What Nate Oats said after No. 6 Alabama's 79-76 loss at No. 5 Tennessee

Everything Alabama head coach Nate Oats said after the 79-76 loss to No. 5 Tennessee Saturday at Food City Center:

Opening Statement

“It was a tough way to lose. You gotta give Tennessee a lot of credit for not quitting when we had ’em down nine there midway through the second half. These guys compete hard. We didn’t do a great job closing it. I’m gonna take most of the blame in the last 30 seconds. It’s on me that (we) subbed our bigs out to get the rebound before I should have. Shouldn’t have subbed them out until after we secured the rebound. So that was on me. And then I had a chance to call a timeout. Coaches can call timeouts on the underneath out-of-bounds play and at four, I should have called it. I thought we were getting it in and that’s on me. 

“We probably could have had better guys in, you know, being a little smaller at the end with the 3.8 (seconds) on the clock to make sure they didn’t get the ball up the floor. We work on end-of-game situations in practice and expect our players to be good at ’em. I was not good for the last 30 seconds today. So I feel like I failed these guys.

“For 39 and a half minutes, they out-played ’em. They were up four. Tough call on Grant’s (Nelson) verticality play there at the end, but it’s the game of basketball. A lot of tough calls in the game. Worst-case scenario is they make a free throw, we still have the ball with 30 seconds to go up one and I should have left the guys in to make sure that we secured it before we got to the offensive end. We foul getting the rebound at the free throw line. They make two for two, which you gotta give them credit.

“We gotta do a better job making our free throws. They shoot 73%, we shoot 65%. We shot 50% at the rim, 65% at the line. It’s hard to win big games like this, but we’re still up four with 30 seconds to go and too many coaching mistakes in the last 30 seconds.”

How disappointing it is to shoot 12-for-29 on layups and miss nine free throws

“You gotta convert your at the rims and you gotta convert your free throws. You can’t beat a good team, you know, typically shooting (12-for-29 on layups). That’s not good enough against a team like this. Like get the ball in the paint. It was everybody. I mean, I’m kind of going through like, we had our guys 16-of-32 at the rim, so there’s a few in there, but you know, I mean nobody was great at the rim to be honest with you. I mean, (Chris) Youngblood was one for one. Nobody else was over 60% the rim. (Labaron Philon), Mouhamed Dioubate were 60%. Everybody else, 50% or lower. So it’s not just one guy. Across the board we didn’t convert at the rim.

“At the free throw line, (Mark) Sears goes six-for-six and that’s it. Nobody else made all their free throws. So free throws, the at the rims, it’s a team effort and we gotta be better with that on everybody.”

How to rally the team heading into the final week of the regular season after a tough loss

“I mean, we played the number one defense in the country. We’re up four with 30 seconds to go and you know, this will probably make us pay a little closer attention to our end of game. Our end of half situation wasn’t great either. We should have taken the last shot, gave them too much time, came down and gave them an and-1. So, they’re plus one in that scenario. If we’d have waited to go a little later, you know, maybe we go plus two in that scenario.

“Moving forward, we gotta really lock in on the end of half and end of games, special situations. I gotta be much better for this team on that. We gotta be better. I think we just pump up how great we played during the course of the game and focus in on some controllables like end-of-game situation stuff that we didn’t do a great job on.”

What needs to happen for Alabama to execute better on out-of-bounds plays

“We probably need to get our under out-of-bounds package together earlier in the week instead of giving it to ’em the day before. So we can focus on some other stuff, and (Tennessee is) good. I mean, they’re physical, they make it hard to get it in. But yeah, that’s terrible to have the amount of turnovers we did on underneath out of bounds. We had the one over there. We tried to get it to (Dioubate), so some of that’s on me too, to be honest. I gotta do a better job for these guys.”

If he feels like Alabama missed out on a great opportunity when Zakai Zeigler picked up his second foul three and a half minute into the game

“For sure I did. Told the guys halfway through that timeout, we’re not putting them away. He’s on the bench, he’s the only guy that really creates a lot of offense for them. You got to give (Jordan) Gainey a lot of credit tonight. I mean, Gainey stepped up in Zeigler’s absence if you will. He plays 30 minutes. He didn’t even make a three, but he ends up with 16 points, 6-of-13. He just kind of got to that mid-range shot a little too much. He got to the line. He was 6-of-6 at the line, so give Gainey a bunch of credit. 

“But yeah, I didn’t think we got up on them like we could have with Zeigler out of the game, in that part of the stretch in the first half.”

If he feels like Alabama was able to play against Tennessee at the speed that it wanted to play

“Yeah, I didn’t, to be honest with you. I thought it was still too slow. I mean, I’m looking, we had 72 possessions. I’m sure they would’ve liked it under 70. I think they may have the slowest tempo in our league because it’s hard to score on ’em. We even scored a few late in the shot clock that we were fortunate to score. So we got way too late in the shot clock too much. We didn’t get enough out in transition, especially in the second half when, after we got up nine, I thought the game slowed down a lot, after we got up nine. Part of that’s, you know, when you’re not getting stops and they’re at the free throw line and the ball’s going through the net, it’s hard to get out (and run). 

“Might have been a little bit more at times, what we wanted, but not enough (tempo) for the whole game to be honest with you.”