Scotty Pippen Jr. had a slow start on Thursday night, but Vanderbilt’s star guard ultimately found his rhythm, and poured in 26 points, 7 rebounds and 2 assists.

But Pippen admitted after the game that an Alabama assistant said something to him before the game, which was news to Alabama coach Nate Oats.

“That’s probably not the smartest thing to be doing,” Oats said. “That’s probably not the smartest thing to be doing. I’ll address that afterwards here. I didn’t know anything about that.”

Vanderbilt poured it on in the second half after they were down 10 at halftime, and then Alabama added to that early in the second half. Oats admitted that Vanderbilt’s second half surge was because of scouting mistakes.

“We gave up 54 in the second, and you look at how they got them – they had 6 3s,” Oats said. “I didn’t think we did a great job on the scouting report on some of the 3 they got off. They run good actions. They got some off that. Stute’s obviously a good shooter. And then we just kept fouling Pippen. He’s a good player, he picks up fouls a lot and we didn’t do a very good job guarding him without fouling.