Embed content not availableManage privacy settings
Alabama coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters after the Crimson Tide’s 99-94 defeat to Florida on Wednesday. Alabama (23-7, 12-5 SEC) finishes the regular season against No. 1 Auburn on Saturday.
Here’s everything Oats said after the game.
“You gotta give Florida a lot of credit. They came in and played us tough. Looked like they had more energy to be honest with you. So, I don’t know if it’s a lag from the tough loss at Tennessee, if our guys are just tired. You know, I don’t know. But to get out-rebounded by 15. We knew they were a tough rebounding team. We’re usually better than that, knowing when we need to get the rebounds. So, it seemed like they beat us to every 50-50 ball. They obviously destroyed us on the glass. Second-chance points they had us doubled. I think we gave up 26 fastbreak points, according to our stats, which is terrible. 26 fastbreak, 19 second-chance. That’s 45. That’s about half their points came on second-chance and transition. So, we gotta be better. It doesn’t matter what your gameplan is if you don’t get back on defense and can’t get a rebound.
So, we’re gonna have to figure it out before we got to Auburn. We gotta go — No. 1 team in the country — we gotta go to their place. It’s gonna be a tough game for us there, and we’re playing for a lot more than — we obviously can’t win the regular season championship. We knew that coming into this game, but playing for SEC Tournament seeding. We’re playing for NCAA Tournament seeding. I thought we’d get a little bit better effort than what we got from some of these guys tonight.”
“Yeah, I mean we knew it was going to be a tough stretch to close. I thought we’d do a little bit better. I thought we’d at least play with a more effot. I’m more, not panicked we’re losing, it’s more concerning how we lost. Getting out-rebounded by 15 and just not getting the 50-50 balls. I think Florida had more pop, more energy than us. That’s concerning to me.”
“We’re gonna have to challenge some of these guys, see some of the breakdowns. Some of the rebounds were breakdowns. Some of them we just didn’t — we had guys leak and not get in the mix. Guys are gonna have to determine whether they want to make some tough plays or not. I didn’t think we made too many tough plays tonight.”
“He’s done a lot for us, obviously. He was our leading scorer in our first and only Final Four we’ve ever played in. He’s a National Player of the Year candidate going into the year. We’ve been a top-10 team all year. He’s been our leader. I think he’s playing really hard. He didn’t shoot it great from 3 tonight but he’s had some pretty efficient games here over the last month and given us pretty good effort on D. So, for a kid from Alabama to do what he’s done these last three years here at Alabama. It would have been nice to send him out with a win on senior night.
“But, it was good the amount of people who stayed and recognized him and the other three seniors. Grant’s had a really good two years here and then Youngblood’s from Tuscaloosa originally and back home. It would have been nice for him to play a little better. He is one of those that just seemed like he’s a little tied. So, we gotta try to figure out how to get his legs back up under him. Cliff, one of the nicest kids you’d ever meet. I thought that O-board where we hit the 3 off it, off Grant’s miss at the free-throw line was big. I thought maybe it could give us a little bit of lift and get us going. He made some plays like that. So, everybody’s capable of doing more. We’ve just gotta get them all doing more.”
“I mean there was — obviously I’m never gonna be happy with all the calls. I thought Chris got hit in the head on the one play. That’s — apparently he didn’t so I asked them to go look at it. That was the one that — you know there was a couple of them that I thought we got fouled that ended up with two points going the other way and that was one of them. So, they said it wasn’t. So I apparently wasn’t.”
“Yeah, we haven’t been closing halves very well. Very frustrating to be honest with you. We needed to do a better job both clock management and just getting stops when we needed to. We felt like we should have been up more going into the half. We ended up being down. And then we came back and ended up taking a lead there to start the second half and then we just, they just started making all the tough plays there after we took — what did we take a five-point lead if I remember right? Right about at the first media timeout, somewhere in there. And then, it just seemed like they made every tough play for the next 10 minutes or so.”
“Yeah, he’s good. I mean, we didn’t do a great job with our coverages on those handoffs and ball-screens and he kind of got downhill and caught the lobs. I mean, he’s a good player. He’s skilled. He led their team in plus-minus with plus-12 in his 30 minutes. We obviously didn’t do a very good job on him. He made the couple 3s, which, we knew he could shoot. He had 11 on the year I beleive coming into this and we kinda gambled a little bit on some of our coverages leaving him open and he made us pay on it.”
“I mean, you gotta be able to rebound the ball on the defensive side to be able to get out in transition. The fact that they had 16 O-boards — in order to play fast — you saw we were taking it out of the net too much. We were trying to run on makes. We were too slow getting it out, but if you can’t get stops it’s hard to be a fast-paced team. Your taking it out of the net and they’re getting so many O-boards. So, our defensive rebounding wasn’t where it needed to be. I mean, it still ended up being a fairly high-possession game. I think we had 82, they had 83 possessions. But a lot of that was some of the fouls there late. I agree, through the course of the game it wasn’t the pace we would have liked to have seen to that.
“On their end, they got out in transition. Like I said, we gotta stop giving up 26 points in transition. Some of those were off turnovers. Some of those were off some blocked shots. Some of those were where we just didn’t get back after a missed shot. Our discipline in transition was awful tonight, which was disappointing in a game of this caliber, to be honest with you.”
“Yeah, I thought guys quit last year at times. I was very frustrated with our effort in some of those games late. I don’t think that’s the case here. It looked to me like we didn’t have enough pop. But, we fought hard. What, we cut it to four there late? I told them at the timeout, ‘Shoot, we were up four with 30 seconds to go against Tennessee and lost the game.’ Like, we’ve been in this situation on the other side. So, I thought they continued to fight. I would anticipate us being a lot better Saturday at Auburn. I don’t think this group is gonna have quit in them.
“I don’t really have an answer to why we didn’t have pop, kinda throughout a lot of the game, but they at least fought and didn’t want to quit. I think we got a bunch of pretty high-character kids, young men that they’re gonna keep fighting. Where I thought last year we kinda succumbed to some give-in a little bit if you will. I didn’t think we had that tonight. We just didn’t quite have the pop we needed to tonight.”
