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Nate Oats wants rematch with Tennessee, says one injury kept Alabama from winning SEC

IMG_3593by:Grant Ramey•03/10/24•

GrantRamey

Alabama coach Nate Oats
Nate Oats (Courtesy of Alabama Athletics)

One injury changed everything for Alabama’s SEC regular-season championship hopes, according to head coach Nate Oats. Had the Crimson Tide’s senior guard Latrell Wrightsell not missed four games with a head injury, it wouldn’t have been Tennessee that clinched the SEC title on Wednesday.

“We needed him in a bad way,” Oats said Saturday, after Wrightsell scored 20 points in Alabama’s 92-88 overtime win over Arkansas at Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa. 

“I feel like if we’d have had him in all those games he was out, we definitely wouldn’t have lost some of the ones we did. We’d have a league championship if he hadn’t gone down. But that’s some of the adversity we’ve gotta play through.”

Wrightsell played eight minutes in Alabama’s 105-87 loss at Florida on Tuesday, a game that helped Tennessee clinch the outright SEC regular-season title a day later when the Vols won 66-59 win at South Carolina. 

Tennessee swept the season series against Alabama, winning 91-71 at Thompson-Boling Arena in January and winning 81-74 last Saturday in Tuscaloosa. Wrightsell had two points in 22 minutes against Tennessee in Knoxville, going 0-for-3 from the field with two rebounds, two steals, an assist and four fouls. 

For the season the 6-foot-3, 190-pound Wrightsell, a Cal State Fullerton transfer, is averaging 9.1 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 23.9 minutes per game, starting nine times in 27 games. He’s shooting 44.1% from the field and 44.5% from the 3-point line. 

“We didn’t win a league championship,” Oats said, “so let’s get ourselves back together, let’s compete for a tournament championship.”

Tennessee, the No. 1 seed in this week’s SEC Tournament, finished 14-4 in conference play, one game ahead of Alabama, which is the No. 3 seed after tiebreakers were used between Kentucky, Auburn, Alabama and South Carolina after all finished with 13-5 league records.

Kentucky is the No. 2 seed, Auburn is the No. 4 seed and South Carolina is the No. 5, playing on Thursday.

Oats on Saturday was already looking forward to a potential rematch with Tennessee at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. Both teams would have to reach the SEC Tournament’s championship game on Sunday for that to happen. 

“Getting a bye till Friday makes it much more likely that you’ve got a chance to win that tournament,” Oats said Saturday afternoon. “So this was big. We needed to win, and our guys knew what was at stake.

“(Being the No. 3 seed) means we’ll be opposite bracket from Tennessee. We’ll see who we end up with on Friday and Saturday, and see if we can’t get a rematch with Tennessee for a third time on Sunday. That’d be great.”

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