What Nate Oats Said After Alabama Basketball's Home Loss to Auburn

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— Alabama basketball head coach Nate Oats spoke to the media after his team's 94-85 loss to Auburn. Here's everything he had to say:

Full Transcript

Opening statement

"Obviously, it's disappointing loss. Give Auburn a lot of credit. They're the No. 1 team in the country for a reason. They did a great job I thought on their defensive end trying to take away our 3s. We didn't shoot it very well, but they contested them. They did a good job contesting our shots at the rim, too. We didn't make great rim reads, but they got us off the 3-point line, pushed us in. They made big plays at the rim. We shot under 50 percent at the rim. Can't do that. We didn't convert at the free-throw line as well as their guards did. Look at their guards, they were 19-of-21 at the line. We only had two guys, who were forwards, go 100 percent at the line.

"Between our free throws, not finishing at the rim and not getting as many 3s off as them, and then not making anywhere close to the level that they made them at. That ends up being the difference because I thought we played pretty hard. We didn't turn the ball over a whole lot. Our turnovers were down, it was seven. We out-rebounded them by nine. We had 14 o-boards to their seven. But it's other stuff you stress–– the turnovers, the rebounds. But we also wanted to get their shooters off the line. You go down the list, and too many guys got 3s off. They weren't supposed to be getting the easy ones off, and they go 12-of-30 from 3.

"So they outscore us by 21 points from 3. And that's just too many with the plan that we were trying to execute on our defensive end. They're a good team on both sides of the ball. We've got to get better.

"I told our guys afterward, when we got beat at home by Tennessee last year on "GameDay," I thought we had a major letdown of leadership on the team that didn't rally us together enough to be ready to go on the road and play well at Florida. We got trounced pretty good on the road. We've gotta have better leadership this year. We're not in full control of our own destiny to win the league outright. We are in full control of our own destiny to at least get a tie with the league moving forward, because Auburn's now game ahead of us, and we have Auburn at their place.

"So we'll see what type of maturity and leadership we have by how we come in on Monday. We'll be off tomorrow. Come in on Monday. Be ready to go. We'll put the scouting report together for Missouri, and then we gotta play. It's not an easy stretch last seven games. I think it's probably the hardest seven-game stretch of anybody in the country at any point. We obviously didn't plan on starting out with a loss, but we did. So we've got three home games, three road games left for the rest of the year, and we've got to bring it."

"Our mindset's gotta be better than they were last year after the home loss after "GameDay" was here. So that's how I challenged our guys after the game, and we've got plenty of stuff we can clean up starting with our ball movement. Part of the reason you shoot 48 percent at the rim is you don't move the ball. You get seven shots blocked, and we only had eight assists. It's a season low by far. The other time we were low was Ole Miss when we only had 11 assists. A little bit of similar issues, where the ball didn't move, too much iso. At least we didn't turn over 20 times this game, but it was just too many bad shots. We didn't get enough good shots on offense, and defensively we gave them too many 3s, and they had guys that make tough 3s.

"We told our guys, 'Don't look at the bench after they make a tough 3. That's what they do, so we just can't let them get it off.' Was it Jones that hit the banked 3 in, and Baker-Mazara had a couple stepback. Well, don't 'em get it off, so you're not looking at us when they hit some tough 3s. We need to do a better job executing the game plan. We need to do a better job putting together a little better game plan the next time we play them, but they're a good team. We know that. They've proven to be the No. 1 team in the country. We were not today. But we move one. We've got six games before the SEC tournament. We need to be great in all six."

How much of a missed opportunity was the end of the first half when you got held scoreless after cutting it to two?

"We talk about starts and closes to the halves. We started out nine-zip in the game. I think they ended the half on a 6-0 run if I’m told correctly, so that’s 15 points right there. Come out in the second half, it goes from nine to 14 before the first media timeout— that’s another five points. You’re up to 20. And then we tied it at one point at 68-68, I believe. I don’t know how much time was up there. Well, if you can take it from there on, we got outscored by nine, so we lose the game by nine.

“So the start to the first half, end of the first half, start to the second half, end of the second half they’re plus-29 if you take those runs together. We talk about starts and closes to the half, and we did an awful job, and they did a great job.

“So, yes, to answer your point, the scoreless run we closed the half out with— not good, going in down nine. We’ve got to be better on both sides of the ball— starts and closes— both halves moving forward.”

What did you think of Mark Sears and how he finished at the rim?

"Not good. I mean, he shot 4-of-17. Obviously, he's a competitor. He wants to win at a high level. He's been able to impact winning for most of his career by scoring the ball. We had him 2 for 6 at the rim. You know, 2 for 11 from 3 and 2-of-6 from the rim, those are typically the more efficient shots you get. I thought maybe a couple of them, maybe he got fouled on one, but refs are never going to be perfect. We sure weren't perfect as coaches or players.

"There's probably some misreads in there. I'd have to go back and look at them, but it wasn't one of his better shooting nights. When he did get it going there kind of in the middle of the second half, I thought his defensive intensity picked up. And that's when we made the run and tied it up. But we gotta be able to play hard even when shots aren't going. That's a sign of high-character guys–– how hard do you play when shots aren't dropping? Can you keep moving the ball? Sometimes he has 10 assists. Today, the whole team only had eight assists. Nobody had more than two, so it wasn't just him that didn't move it as much. Him and Labaron had two each, and then no one else had more than one assist. Like, the ball just wasn't moving well, period, for our entire team.

"So yeah, his finishing at the rim wasn't great. He was 33 percent at the rim. The whole team was 48 percent at the rim. I mean, you go down the list. Dioubate had a miss at the rim he's got to make. Labaron missed some at-the-rims he's got to make. Jarin missed the one he's got to put two hands on and dunk the ball. Grant missed plenty of shots. Grant was 5 for 10 at the rim. I'm going down the list–– Mo Dioubate 4-of-9, Grant 5-of-10, Sears 2-of-6, Holloway 1-of-3. We missed a lot of reads. I mean, so we gotta be better. We gotta move the ball better. We gotta be more unselfish moving forward."

What happened in situations when Alabama was down three points or less? The Tide shot 3-of-12 when trailing by three or less.

"I don't have an answer to why that may have happened. You give some credit to Auburn. When it was a tight game, they were playing hard, forced some tough shots. They're a good defensive team. They put together a good game plan. When there's a tight game, we've got to do a better job finding better shots.

"You know, there's human nature and tendency to loosen up, so maybe when they were up 14 maybe they gave up some better shots to us. I don't know. I don't have a great answer to that. Good stat. As I'm watching the game and breaking it down, I'll be looking at why we went 3-of-12 when the game was tight. I don't have a great answer to that one right now."

What happened with him getting prompted to get on the mic and make an annoucement to the fans?

"I have no idea what happened, other than the administration told me somebody threw something on the floor. We were going to get a [technical foul] in a game that was going to be tight, not quite sure what the score was at that point. We weren't trying to give away free points. So that was one of our fans, disappointed. Doesn't help us win. Not sure why they'd be throwing something on the floor anyways. It's just asinine.

"Don't do dumb stuff. We tell the players not to do dumb stuff, and get flagrants and give the other team free points. We're trying to win the basketball game on a scoreboard. Try to get our players not to do dumb things that give away free points. Try to get the fans not to do dumb things to give away free points."

Has he ever had to scold a crowd before?

"I don't think I've had to do it in college. Obviously, I was a high school coach for 11 years. We had brawls break out in the stands in high school. I've not had to do that in college. It just takes one person to throw something in our attendance of 13,500 people, 13,499 were hopefully really well-behaved. It takes one person to ruin it for everybody, so let's make sure it doesn't happen again."

Talk about the transition defense

"We charted for transition points. I see the stats they have. These aren't always accurate. They had 19 fast-break points for us and 13 for them.

"Listen, they hit the one 3 that was huge. That's the one that resonated for me off the top of my head. I'd have to go back and watch it to remember the other stuff. We did get a little bit in transition. We play fast. They don't quite play as fast as us, but they'll definitely take advantage. It's more that they try to play fast on live-ball turnovers more than anything. I don't think we had many. We had seven turnovers. Mark had the one that he didn't foul, so they didn't score off that. I think Labaron had the one that he missed Cliff on. Holloway had the one that he just dribbled the ball out as the game was over. I'm not sure that we had anymore than that. So I don't know how much they scored off our live-ball turnovers. They did have three points from turnovers."

Talk about the issues coming out of the half

"We have. That's why we switched the starting lineup up a few weeks ago coming out of the half. And you know what, if we have to again, maybe I should have tonight. Sometimes in these big games, you're not trying to make a teaching point, you're trying to win the game. I thought sticking with the starting lineup maybe gave us, but I was wrong. Sometimes coaching is not a exact science. There's a feel to it, and obviously I was wrong because they went from nine to 14, and way too quickly there to start the second half.

"We've had an issue. Starts to the second half are not good. I'm gonna have to go back and look at the start of this one to see why, who, maybe what, we should have done. We had the levarage numbers at the half. Not everybody was great. We decided to try to stick with them, see if we could challenge them, but maybe it wasn't the right decision."

Is Denver Jones one of the best defensive players in the country?

"We call them seals–– guys you can go after. He's definitely not one of those on their team. You look at his plus/minus. He played 31 minutes. I don't have their leverage numbers. My guess would be is defensive leverage number would be really high because he was plus-18 when he was in. That's pretty good. They win by nine, they're plus-18 when he's in.

"I'm sure they wanted him on Sears, and Sears shoots 4-of-17 tonight. We got to do a better job helping Mark get better shots. You know, that's coaching staff didn't do a great job on our offensive side of ball today, making sure we got enough quality shots. And part of that was obviously Auburn's game plan. And part of that was Denver Jones executing the game plan at pretty high level for them.

"We knew he was good. I'm not sure I'd say I knew he was that good to force Mark to go 4-of-17. But obviously he was pretty good tonight."

What's your message to the team for the rest of the season?

"We have six tough games, we've got be ready for every last one of them. We talk a lot about adversity. Sometimes it makes you better. There's a book called by Ryan Holiday called "The Obstacle is the Way" that we've read as a staff before. No teams are any good that don't face a little adversity. Like every goal that we've got left remaining is still in our control, and that's gotta be the mindset. Nobody's feeling good today. Just lost to our arch rival. Had a chance in our own gym to do it. Brought “GameDay” in here. It was a great environment. That’s why we play. Love these games, but we came out with an L. So how do we respond?

"I told them this is real life stuff. Shots aren't dropping, something happens in life, are you a frontrunner? Or do you only have the right attitude when stuff's going well? Or do you got enough character and intestinal fortitude to play just as hard when stuff's going well, or you're giving everything at your job when stuff's not going well at your job or whatever it is. These are life lessons that we gotta learn. So, you know, we face adversity in the game, and we did a pretty good job. At sometimes, I didn't think we did a very good job. Katie asked about the run we gave up at the end of the first half, I thought some guys' shots didn't drop, and their effort dropped. Disappointing.

"I thought in the second half, we get down 14, our effort picks up, we make some plays. Obviously, we know Dioubate's going to play hard, but we make a run and we come back. There's adversity from game to game. We've got adversity. We just dropped our second home game. We haven't lost many home games here in the last five years. We lost to our rival. We had a chance to become No. 1 in the country. We had a chance to be No. 1 in the league. All that’s out right now. What we have right now is a chance to play again on Wednesday against Missouri, and we’ve got to answer the bell.

"We lift after games. That's the way Henry does it. They're in the weight room right now. I told them we'll see. Give an honest effort in the weight room. Let's have some maturity. Come in on Sunday get your treatment from Clarke. Come in on Monday to go through the cleanup and put the Missouri scout in. We've got to be ready to go. Hopefully we're mature enough and have enough leadership on this team that the adversity makes us a better team three weeks from now, four weeks from now. Five, six, seven weeks from now, we're better off from this loss.