What Nate Oats Said After Winning Double Overtime Thriller Against Arkansas

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- No. 25 Alabama took down No. 20 Arkansas 117-115 in double overtime to move into a multi-team tie for second place in the SEC standings. The Crimson Tide overcame a 14-point second half deficit and endured Razorbacks guard Darius Acuff Jr. scoring 49 points to grind out a win in Coleman Coliseum.

Alabama head coach Nate Oats spent time with the media after the victory to discuss what went right and what went wrong for the Crimson Tide in the thrilling victory.

Opening Statement

"Probably a fun game for you guys. Shoot - I'm sure the fans enjoyed it, at least our fans. Man, you've got to give them a lot of credit because they're down men. You play a 50 minute game, basically play with seven guys, I mean at the end they played a couple of guys that never really play, they had to because of the foul trouble. You've got to give those guys a ton of credit. Acuff played 50 minutes, scored 49 points. Obviously, our defense wasn't very good on him, particularly in the first half, but even after halftime, he had 27. He's a good player. We've got to do a better job as coaches, having done the game plan. I do think we got a little better game plan there late, and he hit some tough shots, got to the free throw line. Shoot - him and Meleek Thomas are pretty skilled. Two of those guys go 12-of-20 from three, hit every one of their threes except the one Wagner made there, I think at the start of the first or second overtime. I can't remember. A lot of the stuff runs together.

You've got to give our guys a lot of credit, too. Aiden Sherrell, who typically hasn't been able to play much over 30 minutes, played almost 40, ends up with 26 and 13, 10-of-13 from the field, 6-of-7 from the free throw line, ends up winning the hard hat deal. He played hard. He played well. When we kind of went to the switching, put him on some different guys there in the second half. I thought for the most part he did a good job. A couple tough calls went against him, but he just hung in there and kept playing hard. I thought Philon made some big plays late, particularly on the offensive end. Holloway made some big free throws and plays late. Houston Mallette didn't score in regulation, hits a huge three in the first overtime, hits a huge three in the second overtime that essentially sealed it to go four points. Shoot - I shouldn't say sealed it, but at the end of it, it was the game winning shot. It's a good thing they missed that pull-up and then the follow-up dunk. Our guys just kept battling. We got down, opened the lead up in the first half, the first four minutes of the game. They came on back and went up 14. Then it was 10 at the half, we came out, had a chance to make a free throw to cut it seven, then it felt like a minute later it was back to 14. That's when I called the timeout.

To be down 14 in both halves and fight your way back, get to overtime. We've got plenty of end of game situations we've got to do better at. Letting Acuff get that three off late, not good. We need to get him inside the line, we've got to review that. We've got to do better. Especially with a guy that had that many points at that time. A lot to learn from, but it's great to learn from a win. This is big. We're currently tied with them in the conference, and this is the only time we play them. So we've got the tie-breaker. A big win as far as that goes for seeding. Now we've got five games left and we've got to try to get our guys back healthy. The good thing for us is we've got a lot more depth. I feel bad for Taylor [Bol Bowen], I thought he was going to be able to go a little bit more and he just didn't quite have the pop. Great kid, great teammate. I asked him if he could go late, but he was just too stiff. Hopefully, he's progressing the right way. Hopefully we get him in. London got some minutes in a tight game, that's great for him. Some of these guys played a lot of minutes. We're going to have to get them rested by Saturday, because it's a big game Saturday as well."

What does it say about your offseason program and your team to see the players keep fighting down double-digits in each half and still playing a fast pace?

"Great question. I thought, like you said, down 14 with some time left in the second half, I think we cut it to 13 points at like 12:30, and in less than four minutes we went on a 15-2 run to tie it up at 77. We told these guys they don't have much depth, we need to crack them. We didn't crack them in the first half, credit to them, they kind of cracked us to be honest with you. We were able to kind of crack them there in the second half, and it was kind of a dog fight from there.

To go to the offseason. We're not big on going to the track and running guys' legs off. We play a lot of basketball with the time that we've got. We tell them that. Basketball is different than every other sport. You can run miles, you can run sprints, but basketball is sprints, stops, slides, it's all kinds of different stuff. The best way to get in basketball shape is to play basketball at a really high level and really intense for longer periods of time. That's how we get in shape in the summer. We practice hard, not at this point in the year with all the injuries we've had, but all summer, all fall we practice hard, and we get after them, and we put time in. It's good to know we're in pretty good shape. I mean, Aiden Sherrell, 7-foot center, had to go 38 minutes tonight, give him a lot of credit, and our guys were disciplined, I thought, with not fouling. We knew they were a little foul prone, which is typical of the athletes they have. They were able to get off the ground and block some shots. We were able to foul Pringle out, he played here, we kind of know his tendencies as an elite shot blocker, but also very jumpy to get them. We told them you've got to get in there and use shot fakes on these guys. If you don't, it's going to be a layup on the other end off their blocked shots. They ended up with six blocked shots to our one. It was tough on the two goaltending calls that both went against us. They were pretty identical plays, I thought. Maybe we would've had one more if that one had gone our way. Brazile ends up with three blocks. I thought our guys did a pretty good job with all their athletes in there of getting to the free throw line."

What was the difference on the defensive end in the second half, scheme or effort?

"It was a little of both. I thought our guys picked the effort up. I thought Coach Adams did a really good job. We had big Aiden in the drop and our guards just didn't do a very good job of getting into Acuff and Thomas and running them off the 3-point line inside, in fact they did an awful job of it. We just decided to cross-match and then switch. We put Amari Allen on their center, Pringle, and then he can just switch. They're not a heavy post-up team. They did throw it in there a few times and didn't score. We're fortunate they missed some of those. Obviously, most of their scoring is going to come from their guards. So if they were going to go to a heavy post-up game it was going to go to go away from what they typically do. I thought Coach Adams made a good suggestion and we kind of went with cross-matching and switching. Trying to load up on the non-shooters that they had on the floor. Richmond hit a couple pull-ups that we were good with him taking. Wagner hit the one three, we were good with him taking a lot of those. He only took four of them, 1-for-4, but some of it was definitely better scheme, but I thought we did get better effort there. We ended up out rebounding them and at halftime I think we were down two at the half and ended up out rebounding them after half by nine. Which when you're switching your guards are going against bigs you've really got to fight. I thought we had a little bit more fight. Sometimes that happens when your guard gets switched to a big, they play a little harder. We need them to play that hard whether they're switched onto a big or not. They've got to give us that kind of effort. It looked like a combination of both."

What did you tell the team before the start of the second overtime?

"I said they were running out guys and running out of steam. I said Acuff hasn't been out of the game yet, they've got multiple guys with four fouls, we've got to run. We should be the more fresh team. The best way to run is to get stops. We've got to get stops and we've got to run. We are not turning this into a walk it up game. I'm not sure how much we were able to get out in transition in the second half, I just kept trying to encourage them. They can get a little deflated. At the end of regulation we give up that three we shouldn't have given up. Overtime there's some tough plays, we didn't score, we didn't have a very good possession there, we had the ball tied, we had a bad possession. Hindsight I probably should've called timeout when it wasn't going well. There's plenty of stuff I messed up in the game. I've got to take ownership and we've got to look at it as a staff, but just encouraging them. Look we got the stop, we're good, we're going to the second overtime, we're the deeper, more fresh team. We took Houston out and put Holloway in, thought he'd be a little more fresh and he made some big plays for us. We used our depth tonight, I thought pretty well.

They had seven guys who played more than four minutes. When you look at us we nine guys that played more than four minutes and played 10 guys. Taylor gets 10 more seconds we had eight guys play double-digit minutes. We had a little more depth, we're starting to get healthy. We need to continue to get healthy and healthier. Taylor needs to get healthy because he can give us a lot when healthy, but we're getting a lot closer than we were a week or two ago."

How important has Amari Allen been to this program as a freshman?

"Amari's big. He had a double-double. Shoot, he almost had a double-double at the half. He had 11 and nine at the half. So ends up with 19 and 11, even can probably rebound a little bit more in the second half. Ended up leading the team in minutes because he's so versatile. He can play one through four. He's the guy we put on the five because he can switch, because he can guard guards. He also, I didn't think get taken advantage of in the post as much. So he makes our ceiling significantly higher with the way he's playing. We need to continue to pump him full of confidence. He didn't shoot it great. I'm sure he's a pretty driven player. I'm sure he'll be working on all that, but man, he made some big defensive plays, some tough rebounds, second leading rebounder behind Sherrell with 13 and he ended up with 11. He's going to be a big part of what we do moving forward if we're able to get this thing headed in the right direction like I think we're going to here."

What does it say about Houston Mallette to make big shots in big moments and his teammates to trust him?

"Yeah, this is a kid that all summer and fall in all the four on four and five on five live action shot 49 percent from three. Everybody knows he can really shoot. He puts time into it. He's an elite shooter. We as a staff, with the guards that are out there, getting him more shots. I feel bad every time we get to it the game and he's 2-of-3. Can you get him 10? He probably goes 6-of-10, or 7-of-10, with 10 good ones. So we didn't get him good enough shots and then we also have to -- everybody believes in him. Shoot - when he got that open three right there in front of the bench in the left corner I don't think anybody on our team wasn't fully confident that thing was hitting the bottom of the net. He's been shooting it great in practice. We've got to find him more shots. That's on me. That's on us. We've got to get him more."

Was Aiden Sherrell's rolling to the rim part of the initial game plan or an adjustment in the middle of the game?

"It was a big part. I didn't think we hit him enough. There was times he was open on the roll that we didn't get it to him. We needed to get it to him more. We knew it'd be open. They do a pretty good job of making sure your guards aren't able to get downhill - now they mixed their coverages up, the guards were able to get downhill at times. Yeah, his finishing at the rim - Yeah we were pretty good we were a 1.36 tonight overall, but when he was in the game were a 1.5. His impact rolling, finishing at the rim, 10-of-13, making his free throws, getting offensive rebounds, getting positive offensive leverage, playing well, getting positive defensive leverage. He was great. Great thing that Clarke did a good enough job making sure he was ready to go. That he was able to play almost 40 minutes tonight."

How do you think Labaron Philon did in his matchup against Darius Acuff Jr.?

"I told Labaron before the game, you don't have to outscore this kid. We need to win the game, you need to be a better leader, a better teammate if you well. Everything that goes about winning, not to say that Darius isn't - I'm not speaking to him at all because Acuff just went for 49, he's a hell of a player. I didn't want him thinking he needed to outscore Acuff. We needed to think about what it took to win the game. His defense on Acuff. Labaron ends up with seven assists, Acuff played well at 49, but he had five assists, Labaron had seven. I think there was things, but obviously we got to the end and they were both scoring a lot and we didn't do a very good job on him at all. When he plays these other good guards we need to get the win, that's it. His version of outplaying them needs to be better defense, better leadership, better ball movement, better floor leadership, all that. I thought he was pretty good with all that tonight. Acuff won the scoring deal, we got the win, so that's all that matters. Acuff gets the scoring and we got the win, so great job."

Can you discuss Labaron Philon taking care of the ball?

"Yeah, great point because some of these other games where we've played other elite guards he's come out tried to do too much and shoot he's had two turnovers before the first media timeout in a lot of these other games. We addressed that with him, showing him some of the other games and what he's done. To only have two turnovers and play over 40 minutes, pretty good. I thought he did a much better job of taking care of the ball. You look, he drew 10 fouls. The fact that they had to play two guys that never play at the end of the game, in large part due to Labaron doing a nice job driving the ball. We played 50 minutes tonight, had 86 possessions and only took 29 threes. Everybody's worried about taking our threes away, which they should be with the way we play, and this team was too, they did some switching and the lane was wide open for those rolls because they're so worried about our three-point shooting, but we ended up outscoring them in the paint by 12. I thought Labaron did a good job of that, finding Sherrell on the rolls, getting to the paint himself, drawing fouls. If you combine the paint points and the free throws we're plus 23. They shot three less threes, but made three more. So they made more threes than us, shot a better percentage from it, but we were able to adjust. If a team's going to take away the threes, that's fine. We can score in the lane, score at the rim, score at the free throw line. I thought our guys did a pretty good job of that and I thought Labaron was right at the top, making sure he had a paint attack, a free throw attack and did a good job with that tonight."