Nate Oats Says Alabama Basketball Has 'A Lot of Growing Up To Do' After Road Loss To Georgia

"For an immature team, it definitely could be a trap game," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said on Monday when previewing his side's final road trip of the season against the Georgia Bulldogs

"An immature team would come off a road win at Tennessee, look forward to your big rival game and skip the Georgia game. That would be a huge mistake, because Georgia is a very good team. [You have to be] fully locked in to beat them."

No. 16 Alabama was anything but locked in on Tuesday night, giving up 21 points off 10 turnovers, allowing 25 Bulldog second-chance points on 13 offensive rebounds and allowing sophomore Kanon Catchings to become the latest opponent to set a career high in the scoring department with 32 in a 98-88 road loss in Athens.

"We're good for giving up career highs to guys," Oats said after the loss. "We did it again tonight with [Kanon] Catchings. He's super comfortable, got a bunch of open shots off, and then he ends up with 32. It's like once you get him going, it's hard to shut the water off. He ends up making seven 3's, gets a career high, has his career night. We didn't have any resistance on him all night."

Oats lambasted his team's attention to detail and sounded pained by the Crimson Tide's defensive effort as the post season is just in the horizon.

"We've got some young guys that have no idea what it takes to win at this level, particularly on the road. This was our last chance to get a quality road win, we failed it," Oats said.

Alabama graduate guard Latrell Wightsell admitted the team got complacent in its winning ways and failed to take the unranked Bulldogs seriously after locking up a top-four seed in the upcoming SEC Tournament.

"Yeah, an eight-game win streak, it's easy to get comfortable," Wrightsell said. "It's easy to relax and take the foot off the gas. Georgia wasn't a highly ranked opponent, or they weren't high in our conference, and we have, like, a two seed already locked in. We kind of coasted. And some guys, like, we just kind of reference it to the like, where guys want to go, if you want to play professional basketball, you can't coast in a back to back game or two days. So I know it was a quick turnaround. We haven't had a Tuesday game in a while, but like, when we play these big games, and then we come off, and then we play a team, maybe not at the same caliber, we take our foot off the gas. And just trying to, like, emphasize that, because in the tournament, there's three games in a row, we can have a big win on Friday, and what are we going to do, just take our foot off the gas on Saturday and get popped? So, like, that's what we were basically trying to say.

The Crimson Tide have one more regular season game left on the schedule as a desperate Auburn Tigers team comes to Tuscaloosa on Saturday. Alabama will need to learn from the Georgia loss quickly as every opponent from here on out will be playing with their futures on the line.

"It needs to be a wakeup call," Oats said. "If you have a slow start and you've got guys that aren't locked in, ready to play on both sides of the ball, don't attack the rim, and don't play strong on offense, and don't get stops or box out or rebound on defense, it's going to be hard to win. You're going to give teams that are very good a lot of life. They mauled us on the glass, they got their guys shot and they shot 53 percent, which I think is the highest field goal percentage we've given up all year.

"If you can't turn around from a tough, mentally, physically exhausting game on Saturday and have yourself mentally ready to go on Tuesday then we've got a lot of growing up to do."