Nate Oats discusses Alabama’s emotion, how it factored into advancing to Sweet 16
For most of the first half against Grand Canyon, Alabama found itself in a far closer fight than it might have anticipated. Even coach Nate Oats found himself on edge.
Oats went after the officiating pretty hard, then his bench was rung up for a technical foul when center Nick Pringle slammed a clipboard onto the court.
“Yeah, we let our emotions get the best of us, myself included, with the T that didn’t help, and then Pringle got the T,” Oats said. “We said at halftime, like, we’re not giving away any more free points. So you got to be emotionally invested in the game without doing things that cost you points and stuff.”
The Crimson Tide eventually buckled down and started to rein in their emotions. With that came much better play on both sides of the court.
And Oats began to see his team really embrace something he’s been preaching all year: It’s about the blue collar effort. Alabama tracks it meticulously, and the team’s production in those categories was through the roof against the Lopes.
“That way we were good, I thought our bench was great,” Oats said. “We went a little over the line a couple times, but as far as the blue collar stuff, like, we chart blue collar stuff both ways. This game, we had 115 and we had them with, like, 95, so we had 20 more than them. This is almost a season high for us with 115 blue collar points.
“And you kind of look, like, Aaron Estrada rebounded it great. He ended up leading us. He was diving on the floor for loose balls. He made a bunch of tough plays. But (Mark) Sears was over 20, Nick Pringle was over 20. We had multiple guys in there putting their nose in and making tough plays.”
Alabama slowly pulled away and managed to maintain a pretty comfortable lead for most of the second half. A brief Grand Canyon spurt gave it the lead with about six minutes to play.
Then the closers closed.
“Sears has a double double. Sears wasn’t going to lose. He wasn’t letting us lose tonight,” Oats said. “A lot of that was how blue collar and tough. You know, he was great on defense. I thought it was his best defensive game. So we kind of get the — we lead the country in scoring, we play fast, our offense has been No. 1 in the country for a large part of the year, but we really try to build the program on toughness, blue collar, and it hasn’t been what we would like to see all the year. It was there tonight. Without it, we don’t win tonight.”
But Alabama did win, securing a trip to the Sweet 16 for the third time in the last four years under Oats. Now Alabama will see if its blue collar approach can help it take down 1-seed North Carolina.
The two powerhouses will meet on Thursday at 9:39 p.m. ET with a broadcast on CBS.
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