Nate Oats Evaluates Alabama's Toughness Through 10 Games

The Crimson Tide head coach claims Alabama has "a lot of white-collar players right now," as the offensive rebounding battle has been its main weakness.

Nov 8, 2025; New York, New York, USA; Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats reacts to a call in the second half against the St. John's Red Storm at Madison Square Garden. Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images | Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — There's no need to sugarcoat that Alabama's nightly battle on the offensive glass has been its biggest weakness this season.

The Crimson Tide currently ranks 173rd in the country in offensive rebounds per game with 11.5, but its average of 14.2 allowed is 358th out of 365 Division I schools. It's played a major factor in each of Alabama's three losses, as Purdue grabbed 19 offensive rebounds, Gonzaga had 20 and Arizona tallied 22 on Saturday night in Birmingham.

Offensive rebounds are a great way to display toughness. This is a word that Alabama head coach Nate Oats has used numerous times in a negative connotation over the past couple of weeks. As Alabama holds a 7-3 record and the No. 16 spot in the latest AP Top 25, does Oats believe that toughness can be taught, or is it hereditary?

"It's definitely innate, at some level," Oats said on Tuesday. "Recruit a guy like [former Alabama and current Kentucky forward] Mo Dioubate in, didn't really have to coach him to be tough. He was tough. That's who he is. But I do think that certain coaches and teams always tend to be a little tougher. So I think there's definitely some coachability to it."

Oats was a math teacher at Romulus High School in Michigan and was the head coach there from 2002-2013. He's all about the numbers, and the 51-year-old shared the maximum toughness that one can achieve if taught.

"If it's one of those deals where you're rating the toughness factor from zero to 10, I don't think you're taking a guy that starts at one and moving him to a 10," Oats said. "I think you can move a guy that's a four or five and get him up to seven or eight. Maybe you can take a guy that's an eight and move him up to a 10. You're not taking a guy that's just inherently soft and making him the toughest dude on the court, though.

"You've got to have some fight, determination, toughness, some grit about you, that as a coach, I can try to demand it. You've got to kind of want to do it, and it's got to kind of be who you are on some level.

"But this whole group, as a group, we've got to move it. Whether you rate each guy however you want to rate them, this whole group's got to move a few notches up, and that's been a big point of emphasis."

When Oats arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2019, he implemented a blue-collar scoring system and it's used in every practice and game. Players are given a certain amount of non-scoreboard points for deflections, steals, blocks, rebounds, and loose balls. Offensive rebounds, diving on the floor and drawing fouls are also methods of gaining blue-collar points, and whichever player tallies the most at the end of the game or practice is rewarded with a construction worker hard hat.

Alabama is set to face South Florida on Wednesday evening in Coleman Coliseum. While the Crimson Tide is easily favored, the Bulls' 15.5 offensive rebounds per game rank fifth in the entire country. UA's toughness will certainly be put to the test, and Oats claimed that the lineups throughout the game will be based on who is displaying the most grit.

"You've got to have some scoring, obviously, but you've got to have more guys willing to do the blue-collar stuff, if you will," Oats said. "We've got a lot of white-collar players right now, not that many blue-collar players. We've got to get more blue-collar plays and blue-collar players in the mix."

Subscribe to BamaCentral's Free Newsletter