Nate Oats had the expression on his face that many of us recognize as painful contempt. The look said it all. Sure, his Alabama basketball team came away with the crunch-time win, but it wasn’t pretty no matter how you scratch it.
The Crimson Tide turned the ball over a whopping 24 times. You read that right if I wrote it right. 24 turnovers AND a W? That’s a rarity in college basketball.
Nonetheless, despite the turnovers, Alabama managed to earn conference win number six in the 68-67 home win over Arkansas.
The SEC Now crew caught up with Oats after the final buzzer and he didn’t seem pleased, despite the W column increasing in size by one.
He began by commending Arkansas’ effort and credited them for the Tide’s superfluity of turnovers.
“We didn’t take care of the ball well enough. We had too many turnovers and gave up too many O boards, a lot of that due to how hard Arkansas plays,” Oats said, “They went to the offensive boards hard, they pressured us into turning it over some.”
“But I think guys showed a lot of resolve. We got down after being up 13, and Noah (Gurley) scored two go-ahead buckets. Noah was huge for us late in the game. He didn’t shoot the three particularly well tonight, but he did a great job finishing at the rim. I think he played really hard. I was really happy for him.”
Oats went on to discuss the significance of the win and areas of concern to cover in practice.
“We’ve got plenty of stuff to improve on,” Oats remarked, “but that was a big win. That was the hottest team in the SEC. They’d won nine straight. They were playing great basketball.”
To close, Oats said “Defensively, our first-shot defense was great. We’ve gotta do a better job rebounding, though. We’re gonna have to do a better job on Wednesday (at Mississippi State). We had issues with them before.”
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