Nate Oats Focussed on Effort, Injuries Heading into SEC Tournament

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After a disappointing 0-2 final week of the season against two of the lesser teams of the SEC, Alabama basketball prepares for a trip to Nashville as the No. 9-seed in the SEC tournament.

The Crimson Tide will be facing No. 8-seed Tennessee on Thursday (Noon CT, SEC Network), a team that it lost to in Coleman Coliseum back on Feb. 4.

In a teleconference with the other coaches of the SEC, Alabama coach Nate Oats spoke on his thoughts about the upcoming game.

"Tennessee's a really good team," Oats said. "You know we played them here, they beat us here. We didn't have [Herbert Jones], we'll have Herb. But against them this time you know if we can get healthy I thought when we had everybody playing we were playing pretty good basketball so I think three-and-a-half, three really good days of practice going into this and get our guys' confidence up I think we got a pretty good shot."

For the rest of his time, Oats spoke mostly about two things. The same two things that many Crimson Tide basketball fans are questioning heading into Thursday's game: team health and effort.

"We're trying to get back healthy," Oats said. "We're obviously not playing our best basketball right now with the two losses in a row. I think hopefully [John Petty Jr.] getting three days of practice he'll look a lot closer to what he typically does. He just wasn't himself Saturday."

With Petty adjusting to try and get back into rhythm after hyperextending his elbow, along with Jones still recovering from his wrist fracture, it's now-or-never when it comes to their recovery in the final days heading into the conference tournament.

After the quick talk about his team's health, Oats discussed the constant process of maintaining effort among his players.

"I mean you do it every day," Oats said. "I think obviously as you get to the close of the season you would hope that you wouldn't still be coaching effort. Unfortunately we are right now."

In the game against Missouri, Alabama had a solid defensive performance. However, its offense was also outplayed by the Tigers' defense, resulting in low production. For the first 30 minutes of the game, the Crimson Tide was able to keep up, but the low production on offense caught up with the team, causing it to falter on the defensive end of the court in the final 10 minutes.

Oats and Alabama hopes to correct those wrongs before it faces Tennessee on Saturday, and effort will be a big part of that.

"Mistakes are going to be made, shots are gonna be missed, not everybody's gonna have their best offensive game every night out but we need to give an effort every night out," Oats said. "Moving forward we need everybody in this program to understand what kind of effort you gotta give and if there's certain guys that are incapable of giving us the effort we need to win games then this may not be the spot for them. We're evaluating that. I think our guys know what they need to do. They just gotta prove that they can do it."