The No. 4 Alabama Crimson Tide were held to a season-low 64 points in a 74-64 loss to the Ole Miss Rebels Tuesday at Coleman Coliseum.
Alabama (14-3 overall, 3-1 SEC) dropped its first game in SEC play by committing 21 turnovers, including 14 steals. The Crimson Tide had only four offensive rebounds and got off 47 shots. By contrast, they attempted 68 shots in their 94-88 win over Texas A&M.
Only two players finished in double figures for Alabama. Aden Holloway had 15 points and Mark Sears had 11. After the game, Nate Oats had plenty to say about the Crimson Tide’s effort against the 21st-ranked Rebels — almost none of it good.
When asked by On3’s Charlie Potter about how disappointed it was to see the Tide’s effort when trying to stay in first place in the SEC with Ole Miss and No. 1-ranked Auburn, Oats didn’t hold back.
“It’s disgusting. to be honest with you. With the amount of fifth-year seniors we have and the leadership that should be shown on this team, to have guys not come in ready to play, it’s — look, it starts with me because I’m supposed to be the one motivating these guys and I obviously didn’t motivate them well enough to make sure they were ready. So, I’m going to have to look in the mirror and see what I did, didn’t do. We’re gonna have to have a good talk with some of these seniors that are supposed to be our leaders and figure out why we weren’t ready to go tonight because it’s very disappointing. It’s disgusting and it’s frustrating.
Oats continued:
“And it’s not not like we lost to a bad team. This is a really good team. They’re in first place. Them and Auburn are tied now (for) first place in the league, but we didn’t lose because they were just a far superior team tonight. I felt like we lost because they came ready to play. They brought energy. They brought effort. And we did not. That’s a frustrating way to lose.”
Here’s everything else Oats said.
Opening statement after loss to Ole Miss
“Obviously not one of our better showings. You’ve got to give Ole Miss a ton of credit. They came ready on the road. We did not come ready. I’ve gotta do a better job making sure guys are ready to go. In the first 10 possessions, we had seven turnovers. We’ve been having some issues with turnovers throughout the year. This defense turns people over and we didn’t have our guys ready to go. And then, maybe the most disappointing thing of the night, in my opinion, was our lack of effort on the offensive glass. I don’t know if our guys didn’t realize that that’s what’s been keeping our offense going.
“We haven’t been shooting it particularly well. We’ve had too many turnovers. Our offense hasn’t been great this year, but the offensive rebounding rate’s been really saving us in some of these games. I believe the one offensive rebound in the first half on the box score, I believe, was given to Jarin (Stevenson) on the missed dunk. I think they give him a missed field goal-offensive rebound-turnover, so I think essentially we had zero offensive rebounds in the first half.
“And at the end of the game, we had three if you take one off. You shouldn’t reward a missed dunk with an offensive rebound for hanging on the rim. So to go from 23 against A&M, who’s one of the toughest teams in the country — and Ole Miss is tough, too. let nothing take away from them — but you can’t go from 23 to three and expect to win the game. Ole Miss’ defense is very good. Coach Beard has always had great defensive teams. Coach Adams is over there helping them, and he’s always had great defensive teams. Their switching definitely messed with us. As a staff, I thought we had our guys ready to go. We obviously did not. We’ve got to do a way better job.
“You know, A&M’s got a similar defense but they don’t switch one through five on and off the ball like Ole Miss did as much. For the few times we were able to make them pay, the rest of the game we just got super stagnant. We only had 11 assists to 21 turnovers and we just — we weren’t ready to go. And defensively, we definitely had some mistakes and we should have been better, but we lost this game on the offensive end. We lost the game with our turnovers, our lack of effort on the offensive glass. Guys that we count on to go get offensive rebounds came through with nothing for us tonight. We’ve got to do a better job making sure our guys are mentally ready to go and understand how tough these games are every single night out in the SEC.”
On whether Alabama tallied ‘blue-collar’ points
“Yeah, we did. It might have been a season-low. It’s dually disappointing on what they term ‘blue-collar.’ We had 72 1/2 to their 89 1/2, so they almost had 20 more than we did. So again, I told our guys in the locker room after the game: ‘We have to deserve to win, and we didn’t deserve to win this game.’ Ole Miss came in and they deserved to win to win the game. You have to deserve it with your preparation going into the game and then you’ve got to deserve it with your effort once you’re in the game. The team that deserved to win tonight won the game tonight.”
Nate Oats’ answer when asked if missed free throws were a mental issue with Alabama — and how to fix it
“It would definitely help. I told our guys, we missed seven of them. That didn’t lose us the game, but I’ve been telling them if we don’t fix it, then it is going to lose us a game. If this would have been a one- or two-possession game, maybe you could point to that as it costing us the game. Obviously, if you would have stepped to the line in a few of those situations and made them, it would have maybe helped us get on a run.
“It’s mental with some of them for sure, but here’s my thing with them: free throws are the one thing in the game of basketball that has no variables other than the variables you put into your own head. And if you want to have confidence, you’ve got to earn confidence. You can’t talk yourself into being confident. You earn the confidence by putting up hundreds and if you need to, thousands. And shooting a free throw doesn’t put wear and tear on your body. Even on an off-day when you’re supposed to be recovering, you can come in here and shoot hundreds of free throws. So we’ve been on the guys. We’ve been starting to chart a lot more. It’s something that’s beyond frustrating for me. My guess would be, you know, Grant (Nelson) shot a lot of them the last couple of days, but I’m not sure how many leading up ’til it started to be an issue over the last week or two — a real issue.
“Free throws are a deal where you’ve got to spend time every day working on, and we’ve obviously got to spend some time on it because we had too many guys stepping up and not making free throws when they need to step up there and make them for us.”
On full-court press at the end of the game and not having pressure on the inbounds pass
“We were trying to keep the ball out of the point guard’s hands and… personally, I think you turn people over better that way putting them on the inbound or you can go trap right away. But I felt like they were trying to get it to their best free-throw shooter right away, which twice, they got it to their poorest free-throw shooter and we weren’t close enough to foul him.
“Again, that’s like an effort thing when the guy on him is supposed to be denying him the ball and somehow he’s so far off him that he can catch it and throw it back to the in-bounder without getting fouled. We just weren’t playing hard enough. But that was the thought with the press (and) putting them off the ball: try to get a steal on the inbounds pass, keep it out of the point guard’s hands and force somebody else, which we did and then we weren’t playing hard enough to foul the guy we wanted to foul as soon as he caught it.”
Is Nate Oats concerned about the direction of Alabama’s offense after loss to Ole Miss?
“I think we should all be pretty concerned, to be honest with you. I mean, like, we’re not aggressive other than on the rebounds. The guards didn’t come off attacking the switch like we tried to coach them to do. We’re not shooting the ball very well, but part of that is we’re not getting very good shots. I mean, we only shot 20 threes. Part of that was their switching because they’d switch and our guys wouldn’t be ready to attack the switch and then you’re not pulling the help in.
“I think we will figure it out. I think Coach Pannone, Coach Bauman and myself spend most of the time on the offensive side and we’ll spend a lot of time evaluating this one. But we’re gonna definitely have to get back to getting to the offensive boards. That’s been saving our offense. I don’t know if the guys just felt like they didn’t need to anymore or what, but that obviously didn’t work very well for us.”
Oats on getting Labaron Philon’s confidence back
“I think some of that stuff’s an effort thing. Sometimes when guys are struggling, you play hard, you make some blue-collar plays — he didn’t have many tonight — (and) you make some effort plays. You play aggressive, you get downhill and get yourself going a little bit. I thought his blue-collar plays, his effort plays, have been higher in the past. And also like I told the whole team, you’ve got to earn the right to play well. Are you spending enough time in the gym working on your game outside of practice, or are we having to beg you to get in the gym?
“It’s like some of these guys (have) got to get in the gym and work on their game. We’re not going to practice them for three hours a day at this point in the season. We’ve kept practices short, an hour and 15. We did an hour and 20 yesterday. We didn’t practice Sunday at all. So how much are they getting in the gym, working on their own? You’ve got to deserve to play well. I’m not sure, right now, everybody on our team deserves to play well.”
Nate Oats praises Ole Miss, says Rebels could be double-bye team in SEC Tournament
“They’re proving it right now. I mean, they’ve got two tough road wins. Their style’s a little bit different than most, particularly on the defensive end. They’ve got good, hard-nosed, tough players. You look at some of the guys, they’ve got seven kids on that team that scored a thousand points or more in their career. The way they looked tonight, I think they should be in the mix to win the whole thing; not just be a double-bye team but I think they’re going to be in the mix to win the whole thing.
“At this point, four games in, we no longer have control of our own destiny since we don’t get them again. Somebody else (is) going to have to beat them. We’re going to have to take care of business. They’re going to be in the mix, I think. They’re a good team. You’ve gotta give them a bunch of credit for the way we played tonight, too. I mean, I’m disappointed with our effort, the way we came out ready to play, but you’ve got to give them a ton of credit with the way they guard, the way they play. They were ready to go.”
Oats on what challenges Malik Dia presented to Alabama
Dia had a game-high 23 points in the Rebels’ victory.
“He obviously presented a lot tonight. We knew he was good. I thought some of their guards had been some of their higher scorers coming in. But when we switched, he seemed to be able to punish us on the switch a little bit more. He got it inside. When he did miss, he went right back up, got his own misses a lot.
“He was a problem for us tonight. We may have screwed up some of the matchups. He played 31 minutes. I didn’t play Cliff (Omoruyi) nearly as much. I probably should have played Cliff more, matched up with him, switched less. (Dia) was an issue tonight. We’ve got to do a better job preparing for bigs like that.”
Oats on Chris Youngblood becoming a spark for Alabama
“It’s hard to pick out any silver lining in this, but he played heavy minutes. It seemed like his body was responding better. He didn’t shoot it particularly great — 3-of-10 — but I think he’s getting more confident in the offense, making some tough plays. He’s also — he had some screwups, too. Hopefully he’s more comfortable.
“And I thought (Aden) Holloway showed pretty well. He’s the one guy who shot it pretty well tonight. We didn’t score very well at all, but he ended up in double figures leading us in scoring with 15. And I thought defensively, he was a little bit better than he’d been, too, which (was) evidenced by he played almost 30 minutes, so he got more minutes than normal.
“But nobody was good enough for us to win this game, including the head coach, and we’ve got to be better moving forward. We’ve got a tough one on the road against Kentucky.”
Alabama travels to Rupp Arena to face the Wildcats on Saturday. Tipoff is scheduled for 11 a.m. CT. The game can be seen on ESPN.
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