Alabama coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters after its 103-87 win over Vanderbilt on Tuesday. The Crimson Tide (16-3, 5-1 SEC) has won two straight after its loss to Ole Miss one week ago and next faces LSU at 7:30 p.m. CT Saturday inside Coleman Coliseum.

Here’s everything Oats said.

“Solid win over an improved Vanderbilt team. I thought our defense in the first half was pretty good. I thought it completely fell apart in the second half, which is a little bit disappointing. For a team that’s going after a championship, we’ve gotta be a lot better at that in the second half. To give up 56 points — you gotta give Vandy a lot of credit. They hung in there and kept fighting. They got good shots off. Shoot Nickel had all his 3s in the second half. So, we gotta figure out our defense it’s not where we need to be. Offensively, we did enough. Didn’t shoot free throws as we would’ve liked either.

“Huge game for Mo D. Again, I guess there’s only been five players since I’ve been here to get 20 points and 10 rebounds in a game. So, he put himself in some pretty elite company over the last six years with some pretty good players that have been here. I think Mo plays hard all the time as evidenced by he’s led us in plus-minus the last two games. Plus-21 against Kentucky and plus-26 tonight in 23 minutes. So, you kinda know what you’re gonna get out of Mo. He’s gonna play hard, he’s gonna play tough, he’s gonna play physical. He was our best matchup on their point guard because he sits down, he can move. They’ve got some guys that can score. Edwards had 21 but Dioubate did a pretty good job. Some of our other guys are gonna have to pick up their defense for this team to be at the level we want it to be at.

“We’re off tomorrow. We play Saturday. We come back on Thursday so some guys are gonna have to decide how good they want to be, how much effort they’re gonna give on the defensive end because the effort we got in the second half is not gonna win us any championships this year. But solid win. Some guys played well. We got a lot of scoring off the bench. I think the most we’ve had this year.

“I thought Holloway was good. Holloway was plus-21 during the game. If you look at all of our bench to be honest with you. Dioubate plus-26. Holloway plus-21. Youngblood plus-17. Aiden Sherrell plus-12. Those are the only guys we have on double-digit positive plus-minus. Our starters didn’t get us off to a start the game, didn’t get us off to a very good start to start the second half either. So we gotta get some better leadership from the starting group to give us better starts to both halves moving forward.

“But, really happy for Dioubate, really all four of those guys off the bench. Diobuate and Holloway played great. I thought Aiden Sherrell gave us really good minutes. He guarded well, got to the offensive boards. Him and Dioubate were really the only ones that had multiple offensive rebounds. So, good effort from those two and I thought Holloway played extremely hard and played well as well.”

“The offensive end he’s been as consistent a guy as I probably ever coached. Pretty much every game, no matter how it starts he ends up with 20 somehow. He did it again tonight. He ends up with 21. So, when you’re scoring around 20 every night in as many games as he’s played — I think he’s the 82nd Division I player with 2,500 career points. That puts him in some pretty good company. So, congrats to Mark.

“I thought he picked it up offensively for us there in the second half. We put the ball in his hands late. When it got close… It was 11 they hit the 3 to go to eight. I thought once they got it cut to eight, I thought Sears from there kind of took over a lot. We put it in his hands, kind of set up the high ball screen. He got downhill, made some good reads. Had some assists, some buckets. He’s a guy you can really trust on the offensive end to make sure we get good points.”

“A ‘C’ since I’m a teacher. You give it like an A- in the first half and then they failed in the second half. So when you average out a failing grade and an A-, you’re going with C, I guess. So, first semester, second semester and you’re not really getting a final exam. It’s just first quarter, second quarter. But I was disgusted with the second-half defense, to be honest with you. But, I thought we came out of the game with a way better attitude, playing hard. I think we helped them to a 0.82 in the first half and then it jumped up to a 1.3 in the second half. So, a 0.82 against a team like this is pretty good. So the first 20 minutes was pretty great and then it’s a 1.3 in the second half and that’s terrible.”

“Pretty high. I think if you look at SEC — go to the website — up until last game he was No. 1 in the conference in field goal percentage. I think there’s a minimum he had to make at least five field goals made per game. So, I hope this gets him back up over that. I don’t know if this puts him back at No. 1 again, but he’s shooting the ball extremely well. He’s hitting that floater in the lane. He’s making his 3s.

“It’s extremely hard for a guard in a league this good to lead the league in field goal percentage. So, it kind shows you his skill level, what he’s capable of. I never want him to pass up an open 3. I really don’t care how deep it is. It can be 26, 28 feet, I think it’s going in every time. Those floaters he shoots in the lane, he’s been really good at those. He has a good finishing package at the rim. So, his confidence is high, but I think part of it is he plays hard. I think his effort on defense is really good. You saw him strip the big. He got switched onto Carey there, the on where he stripped it in the middle of the paint.

“At the half, he was leading our guards. He had six blue-collar points. He was leading all the guards for the game I think he ended up having 11, which was pretty good. I mean, Mo D won it with 17 and Holloway — it’s a little harder for guards to get them sometimes — had 11. He’s in double digits. We only had four guys — him, Grant, Aiden Sherrell and Mo D – in double digits for the blue-collar. So he’s playing really hard. I think when you play really hard, giving effort liek that and you’ve got the skill — you put a lot of time and effort into your skill level. I think things go your way, and I think things are going his way right now and I’m super happy for him.”

“I definitely don’t think it’s anything in his mechanics. When he came here he was shooting it as well as anybody I’ve ever seen. If you watch him and Sears. The two of them always come in and shoot together. Preston’s always with them, it’s a real shooting contest. They really go back and forth. Sears shoots it as well as Holloway. So, some days Sears is better than him. But it seems like teams are a little more loaded up on Sears. Holloway’s kind of like a second option when he’s in there so he’s able to get a little more free.

“But the mechanics have been great all the time. I do think he needed to get his confidence up. He needed to get comfortable in our system. How aggressive do I want him to be? I can’t get him aggressive enough to be honest with you. What 3s do I want him to take? I want him to take every single one that’s open. I think he had to realize — I think the game where he had 19s… and I told him he really should’ve taken 22 because there were three that I really wish he would’ve taken. I think his reply to me was ‘Say no more.’ So, get them up. As many as you can get up because he’s not missing many.”

“To me, he’s always had it. It was just, he needed to learn how to do it with the correct spacing when the opportunities are there. Because you can’t just put your head down, drive into the crowds and expect anything good to happen.

“We came in, maybe three weeks ago? He was killing everybody in practice one day… Nobody could guard him. Maybe Youngblood had the best option. He was too quick for our bigs, way too strong for the guards. Youngblood’s strong but even he struggled a little bit.

“I came in the next day with about six new plays for him. So, if you’re gonna play like this we’re gonna have a little — and [assistant coaches Craig Bowman and Ryan Pannone] together on offense. Bowman more keeps the plays together, keeps them organized by playsheets. And on the playsheet, all of a sudden the next day — it’s in here it’s called the — he named it himself — the ‘Offroad Package.’ So, Mo D’s got the Offroad Package. It’s kind of like smashmouth. Not typically the way we play but it’s there and we got it in. Honestly, we didn’t really call a whole lot for him other than we got the one play in transition where I said ‘He has a mismatch on him, just give it to him.’ Just go beast mode, just score the ball, which he did.

“He’s got opportunities because people are so concerned with our guards, in particularly right now with Sears and Holloway. This guy’s jumping out to help catch a screen or whatever and he just gets the ball. Shoot he was 8-for-9 tonight. The one he missed there late — he could’ve easily been 9-for-9. I mean, he typically makes the one he missed tonight. He’s making free throws at a better clip. He’s in the gym working hard. Not that he was ever not aggressive because he couldn’t make a free throw as well. He’s always aggressive, but I think it helps when you got to the line and make free throws. You wanna get fouled because you got to the line and get free points at the line.

“So, the more he comes along offensively — we’ve known he’s been great rebounding, defensive-wise — the better off we’re gonna be.”

“Honestly the 21 turnovers came because we weren’t aggressive enough in attacking Ole Miss’ coverages. Our guards were super passive coming off ball screens, put no pressure on the defense in any of our pick-and-rolls. Our guards are coming downhill putting pressure on them. When you put pressure on them, the defense collapses. If the defense collapses, you get shots, the kickouts are wide open. Ole Miss game, we put no pressure on them. They built it out. They got steals on the buildouts because we didn’t put any pressure.

“To me, with some intelligence, with a high IQ, we want you playing as aggressive as you can possibly play and that’s when we’re playing our best basketball. Even tonight, I didn’t think we put enough pressure on the pick-and-roll. When we finally started to in the second half, Cliff set more drags in transition. Guards come off trying to score, we got Cliff on some lobs. We got some slip out with Mo Dioubate in some of that stuff. I think we’ve got our guards – and again, this is a lot of credit to Coach Pannone and Coach Bowman on the offensive guards — but get more aggressive. Put pressure on the defense. Put pressure on the switch when they’re switching. More aggressive. More aggressive. Better spacing. Keep them spaced out so the help’s gotta come from further. Ball moves, I mean there’s some really good ball movement clips tonight and make the rotations come from a long ways away. And I think it helps with the turnovers.

“And shoot, I think we had 3 chargers called tonight. So three of those turnovers that could have easily been blocks and all of a sudden instead of 11 turnovers, we only have 8. So, I thought we didn’t have many live-ball turnovers. And the one I remember for sure, when Dioubate turned it over there in the first half, Holloway came back and covered for him. I thought he did an unbelievable job. So trying not to let them score points off turnovers. Yeah, they had 8. We had 17. So we doubled them up in points off turnovers and that’s what they do best. They’re leading the country coming in. So, stuff we’ve been focused on, particularly on the offensive end we’ve done a pretty good job of.”

“One, I wanted to make sure he was good because when he got that foul called on him when Hoggard drove, Hoggard got him with an elbow right in his rib. So, he was having a hard time breathing which makes you a little worried. So, we got him out. Doctor checked him out. Clarke our trainer and I wanted to make sure you’re good still. Like, let’s make sure you’re healthy.

So, other than that, we gotta get him to the O-boards more. I mean, he only had one offensive rebound. Like, we’ve been on him to rebound. Dioubate in a few more minutes tonight — he ended up playing more because he was playing well — ends up with 10 rebounds and Cliff only had three. Now, he went the one time put two hands in his back. We gotta do it without fouling. But we also want him to get into ball screens quicker in transition and get out. With the way they were covering that, I thought we could’ve got a lot more lobs if he was a little more aggressive to get into the ball screens, then sprint out of them.

“Defensively, I thought he was pretty good. We need him to rebound more. We need him to play with more pace, more pressure on the rim as a pick-and-roller. That’s the big areas we’re trying to get him to improve on.”

“For a kid that’s from the state of Alabama. No high majors wanted him coming out of high school. He ends up going to a good mid-major program at Ohio U. If you go back and actually look – I think there were games at the beginning of his career at Ohio where he didn’t play or played very few minutes. But I’m pretty sure if you go back and look he didn’t play his freshman year.

So, to have that and then to go to a National Player of the Year candidate tells you everything you need to know about his work ethic. He didn’t shoot it particularly well his freshman year at Ohio even though once he got in the rotation he played pretty well. But he didn’t shoot it well. So between his freshman and his sophomore year, he essentially locked himself in the gym and turned himself into a shooter. He’s now one of the best shooters in the country and that’s through all hard work.

“So I’m gonna be talking about him for years down the road about what guys are capable of if they’re willing to work hard, put the time in and really do what you need to do. It takes a lot of work to be this good. He’s gonna be in tomorrow. It’s an off day, but I guarantee you he’s gonna be in getting a shooting workout in. Every day he’s in here — wants to go before practice, wants to go back in the afternoon. Sometimes he comes back even again in the evening.

“For him to score 2,500 points, being from here. Nobody wanted him out of high school. Doing what he did in his first two years at Ohio and then coming back here and having a career — even his first year here. We were the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, he was our second-leading scorer. I don’t know if anyone expected him to be that good right out of the gate. I mean, Brandon Miller, second overall pick in the draft, been killing it in the NBA these last two years was the leading scorer. Mark was our second-leading scorer that year. So, he came in immediately able to score. He’s really progressed as a point guard. I mean, these games where — he had seven assists, zero turnovers tonight. So, he’s had multiple games where he’s had really high assist numbers, very low turnover numbers. His growth as a point guard making the right reads, taking care of the ball. That’s where he’s grown the most here and I thought his effort on defense for the most part this year’s been significantly better.

“I think we need him to lead. I thought he could’ve been better in the second half today. But if we’re talking about 2,500 points his offensive game has grown a lot. I couldn’t be happier for the kid especially from the state of Alabama here at his home-state school at Alabama. So, congrats to Mark and I’m super happy for a kid that works that hard. I can roll with a kid with his work ethic the rest of my career. Hopefully, we keep finding guys like that.”