Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's win over Illinois

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Alabama coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters after the Crimson Tide’s 100-87 win over No. 25 Illinois on Wednesday. No. 8 Alabama bounced back from a loss to Purdue in strong fashion, taking down its first Power Five opponent of the season and gaining some momentum ahead of a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada for the Players Era Festival tournament.

Here’s everything Oats said after the game.

“That’s a big win. Illinois is good. They’re talented. Got multiple guys that are gonna end up playing in the NBA. They’ve got length everywhere. They beat us on the boards, so we’ve got to get significantly better on the glass. But I thought our guys did a much better job defensively. We had a few things we had to get cleaned up, and I thought we played pretty hard. I thought we had a group in there to close the game out that played pretty well on defense and got to the rim on offense.

“There’s lots of positives. We shot the ball well from some guys. I think Grant got his confidence going, obviously, early. Labaron has been playing really hard, almost had a triple-double with 16, nine and seven. I think the ball moved a lot better. Twenty-three assists to only seven turnovers was big. So there’s a lot of positives, but a lot of stuff to improve on still.”

“He was great on the bench. He was struggling. There’s a lot of pressure on him, obviously, being a home-state kid that came back. He’s the preseason player of the year, and he’s trying to do well. Teams are gearing their defense toward him. He had some good looks tonight; they just didn’t go. I took him out to kind of let him get his head together a little bit, and I tried to put him back in and he just said, ‘Look, they’re playing well.’ “I’ll be honest with you, it’s similar to what Herb Jones has done before. We’ve had some really good players here that have just kind of been unselfish enough and want to win bad enough to just say, ‘Hey, let the guys go. They’re playing really well. Leave them in.’ So that’s what I did. I tried to put him back in the middle of that 11 minutes, but he said leave these guys. They were playing pretty well. He was right, so we left them in, and they went on a run and won it. I’m sure he’ll bounce back against Houston.”

“Obviously, Holloway shooting it like he did helps a lot with the bench. Derrion, Aiden Sherrell kind of showed what they’re capable of. They’re starting to both get a little more comfortable. Dioubate threw in another three for us, and I think Jarin’s got a huge jump he can still make this year. We’re deep. Everybody knew we were deep. We needed the bench tonight with how Mark maybe struggled shooting it a little bit. Holloway came in and helped us out a little bit. So I thought it was big. I think our bench will probably give us pretty good production most of the year because there’s going to be quite a few guys that would be starting at most places coming off the bench, so we’ll get pretty good bench production most of the year.”

“He picks up some silly ones where he gets out of position and kind of comes in late. So we gotta keep working with him on some of that. Him being in a drop like we’ve got him in, he didn’t really play it like that at Rutgers. So he’s just got to continue to get better. I thought we’ve seen him get better and better in the drop. I think when Grant went to the five and kind of got in the drop, he had a blocked shot. I think he’s done a little more, so you can see he’s a little more experienced with it. So we just got to keep working with him on that and then keep working. But like you said, I mean, he was plus-14 when he was in the game, played 15 minutes. We were plus-14 with them in there. So we gotta try to keep him out of foul trouble so we can keep him in the game a little bit longer.”

“It was big. We needed to play against a high-major team, a good one, a top-25 team and be able to get a win. And I didn’t even think we played great in a lot of areas. I mean, you look at the offensive rebounds we gave up. We didn’t shoot it particularly well from some of our better shooters, and we were still able to score 100 points. We did take care of the ball a lot better, and I thought our defense improved.

“So I think we need to continue to see little things improve and do well and just keep building on it because Houston’s obviously really tough, really good. Giving up 14 O boards – and Illinois’ very good. They’ve got length everywhere. They go to the O boards. They’re one of the better rebounding teams in the country. But they’re not at the same level as Houston’s going to be on the offensive glass. So we’re going to really pick up on our defensive rebounding. Purdue kind of got to us there, Illinois got to us. So we’re going to have to make a huge point of emphasis on that going forward.”

“From what I thought when you go back to last spring when he opened his recruitment up and we took him, yes, I’m surprised from then. But if you ask me after the summer, after watching what he did in June, July, August, he came in and established himself as one of the best guards in the program right out of the gate in the month of June. So I think he came in competing. I mean, he had the right mindset coming in, though.

“Like when he opened his recruitment up, he kind of made the point, I think one of the statements might have been, if I’m not going to play much – because Kansas took a lot of transfer guards when he signed – if I’m not going to play much, I’d rather be home in Alabama at Alabama if I’m not going to play much. I said, ‘Look, just come in and work hard. We’ll see what you can earn.’ So he kind of just came in expecting nothing, had to earn everything, and when you feel like you gotta earn everything, that’s when I think you start playing your best.

“It’s why we don’t ever promise anybody minutes, starting spots, anything around here. I think you make everybody come in and earn it. And also, you get guys like Labaron that blossom. And he’s kind of earned from summer, fall practice. He’s one of our hardest competitors in practice every day. He’s winning the blue-collar in practice. He won the Hard Hat tonight. He just makes a bunch of tough plays and just loses himself in the game. I don’t think he’s worried about how many points he scores, about how many times he touches it, how many minutes he’s played. Just if he’s in, he’s playing hard, playing the right way, and it shows.”

“We didn’t play fast enough against Purdue. One of the clips that we did play fast enough was him. He got downhill, scored a layup. We just said we want to keep the pace going. I think it’s easier to play fast when you got three of those four guards in. I thought he pushed the pace tonight. He’s super skilled. I mean, he’s as good a shooter as I’ve ever coached. So the fact that he went 3-of-4 from three is not really that shocking. I’d venture to say he’s gonna have plenty other games where he goes 3-of-4, 4-of-5, 5-of-6. Who knows. He can shoot it, and his pace is good. His skill level is high. He’s got a good finishing package in the lane. He’s good. I don’t know that I would say I envisioned this because – we knew he was really good coming out of high school. I think maybe sometimes it takes a little bit to adjust in college or whatever. He definitely had some good games at Auburn, but we thought he could be more like what he was coming out of high school, and I think that’s what you saw tonight.”

“I think they cut it to eight at one point, if I remember right. I think maybe we had a 14-point lead. I couldn’t remember. Did they cut it lower than that? I think maybe eight was where we got. We were up 18 at one point in the first half. I think we were up maybe 17 in the second half, if I remember right, at some point. They cut it to eight, and I think that’s when I called the timeout. I thought we came out of that timeout, played pretty well. I think we went on a 7-0 run after the timeout, and it started with some defense. We got some transition buckets off our defense, and then they made some tough shots. I thought we did a better job keeping them off – they ended up with 14 O boards. They had 13 with about 12 minutes to go in the game. We kept talking about making sure they didn’t get any O boards. They got the one there late, I think when Riley got it, if I remember right. But other than that, I thought we did a better job keeping them off the glass. And they’re gonna make some tough shots.

“Sometimes basketball is a little bit of a game of runs, but you gotta make them keep taking tough shots, don’t give up O boards, nothing easy. And then we just had to make sure we had some better shots on our end. We got to do a better job getting to the offensive boards and getting some easy looks, too.”

“I thought he was good. I mean, we want him to shoot the ball with confidence. We finally got him to drop a three. We’ve seen him shoot well in practice, I thought he had a nice lob he caught. He played pretty physical and got some rebounds. A lot more like what we thought we’d have got, and I got him more minutes. So I thought he deserved more minutes. I thought I should have played him more at Purdue, to be honest with you. But he played a lot better for us tonight. For him to get plus-eight in his nine minutes was pretty good.”