Curing Recent February Woes Begins With Sweeping LSU for Alabama Basketball

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Nate Oats loves quotes.

He even told reporters last week that he used to use Nick Saban quotes from his time at Buffalo and Romulus High School to motivate his players.

But on Tuesday, the University of Alabama coach shared one from NBA Hall of Fame and current Miami Heat president Pat Riley with his Crimson Tide squad in hopes that it would set the tone for how the team was going to handle the month of February, a month that hasn't been good to the program for some time.

“It’s easier to back away from excellence than it is to give everything you’ve got. It’s easier to let the frustrations, distractions and fatigue of a long season erode your performance. But it’s not satisfying in the long run.”

Over the course of the last four seasons, Alabama is 14-19 in February, including a 3-5 mark in Oats' first year at the Capstone.

The 10th-ranked Crimson Tide is welcoming LSU (11-5, 6-3 SEC) to town on Wednesday night (6 p.m, ESPNU) inside Coleman Coliseum and it will be the team's first crack at reversing its February woes of years' past after coming off a loss to No. 9 Oklahoma, 66-61, to close out the month of January this past Saturday.

Still undefeated in Southeastern Conference play at 9-0, Oats believes that the narrative surrounding Alabama and February are about to change.

“When you look back at the end of the season, are you gonna wish you had put a little bit more time into it in February?” Oats said on Tuesday afternoon to the media. “Are you gonna wish you would have practiced a little harder? Are you gonna wish you had gotten in the gym? Are you gonna have regrets? Let’s not have that because we’ve put ourselves in a great spot to where we’ve got a chance to win the league.

"It’s just gonna come down to do you have the discipline? Do you have the mental toughness to fight through the fatigue of the long season? Or is it gonna get to you? If we’ve got a mentally tough group, if we’ve got a group that wants to win at a high level, we’re gonna figure out ways to win in February because it’s not like we’re in the third or fourth month of the season and the teams we’re playing are in the first month of the season. No, we’re all at the same place here.

"So, we’ve just gotta do a better job handling the fatigue of the season.”

Alabama has already embarrassed the Bayou Bengals once this season back on Jan. 19, where it drilled an SEC-record 23 three-pointers in a 105-75 rout. But after narrow victories over Mississippi State and Kentucky, in which the offense looked out of sync at times, mixed with that loss to the Sooners, the Crimson Tide can't afford to let things tailspin out of control.

"We’ve just gotta beat the statistics," Crimson Tide guard Jaden Shackelford said. "We’ve done it so far this year, and I feel like this team is more than capable of having a winning February going into March. I feel like if me and the guys lock in, then it’s nothing we can’t change.”

“This team is different than the years past," Alabama senior forward Alex Reese added.

Senior forward Jordan Bruner is still out with a torn meniscus, while wing Herb Jones, forward James Rojas, and Reese are all dealing with nagging medical issues.

Alabama won't necessarily be at 100 percent, but neither will the Tigers.

LSU big man Darius Days is out for the rematch against the Crimson Tide with an ankle injury. He had been averaging 12.1 points and eight rebounds.

Going through the SEC schedule a second time is going to bring on new challenges for the Crimson Tide as it hits the straightaway toward March Madness.

"Teams are guarding us different now and I expect LSU to do a better job than last time," Oats said. "Look, we beat Kentucky by 20 at their place then they come here and make it really tight. It's what's going to happen. Teams are going to make adjustments. We have will have to do the same thing with them, too.

"It will be a fun game. A heated one, for sure. They are going to come ready to play after what we did to them at their place."