Nate Oats gives honest assessment of Alabama falling short against Creighton

On Saturday, Alabama came up short against an excellent Creighton team. After the game, head coach Nate Oats shared his honest assessment of the Crimson Tide falling short against the Bluejays.

Oats explained that Alabama is a good team but right now, against good teams, the Crimson Tide are failing to make winning plays.

“In our four losses, we’ve shown we’re right there with all the best teams in the country but we don’t do enough winning stuff to actually win the game,” Nate Oats said. “So, I think it reaffirmed what we already knew after the Purdue game, Clemson, Ohio State.”

One thing that Oats emphasized that he’s happy with is Alabama’s efficiency. However, it’s that failure to play winning basketball in key moments that he thinks is costing this team.

“You look at the efficiency metrics, a lot of them have us top 10 in the country. Nobody in the country has us top 10 because we don’t make enough winning plays in the games. We’re right there, on offense we’re efficient enough, Our defense stinks right now and we don’t make enough winning plays. We had a big stop late in the game, we don’t box out, they get an o-board,” Oats said.

“Like, we couldn’t get stops when we needed it. We’re in there. We had a lead on them in the second half, we give up a big run there, I think it was from the eight-minute mark down to the four-minute media timeout. That eight-to-four mark was a disaster for us. We had some of our better players not playing well on offense and our defense wasn’t good enough. I think they went on a 9-0 run kind of in that mark to take a six-point lead. We didn’t make winning plays. When it’s winning time, we get in the last eight minutes of the game, it’s a tight game, you got to figure out how to get some stops and some rebounds and get some good quality shots and we’re not doing that right now.”

Things won’t get easier for Nate Oats and Alabama easier. Next up for the Crimson Tide is the top-ranked team in the country, the Arizona Wildcats.

Nate Oats: ‘We’re not doing enough to beat good teams’

After the game, Nate Oats emphasized that Alabama is simply not good enough to beat good teams, like Creighton, right now.

“Tough loss, I mean they are a good team. We were in there, definitely wasn’t one of our better shooting nights but they didn’t shoot great either. You know, [Ryan] Kalkbrenner affected the rim in the second half… We’re not doing enough to win against good teams right now. Creighton’s a really good team I mean, hopefully, Kalkbrenner looked fine in the second half. Hopefully he’s healthy and they go on to win some games, that would help. I mean, they do a good job defensively. They did a good job guarding the three-point line. It’s our season low in threes made,” Oats said.

“So on our defensive end, you know, we just weren’t good enough. We got to do a better job guarding … our bigs have to figure out how to guard without fouling. That’s two games in a row that both Nick [Pringle] and Mohammed [Wague] foul out and not that many minutes so they combined for 30 minutes and 10 fouls … We’ve got to do a better job guarding without fouling. We gotta do a better job of putting them in a position where they need to foul but we had some positive things. I thought we played well in stretches but we got to figure out how to win a close game against a good team here.”