Nate Oats gives Florida backhanded compliment on strong rebounding in leadup to showdown
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Nate Oats was just trying to be nice to a hated SEC rival — well, sort of.
Two days before his 23rd-ranked Alabama team invades Gainesville to face 19th-ranked Florida, in a 1 p.m. ET Sunday showdown on ABC, Oats added some more spice to an already spicy matchup. He held court with reporters on Friday and spoke on an array of topics involving the 2 teams, including what UF head coach Todd Golden recently said on his radio show about possibly facing Charles Bediako.
The controversial Crimson Tide center will be able to play on Sunday, so Golden’s Gators will indeed be tasked with stopping him. But that saga is just a part of what will make Sunday’s showcase game a must-watch event for fans of both teams, for SEC basketball fans and for college basketball fans in general.
But Oats put another log on that fire between the 2 elite SEC programs when talking about Florida’s excellent rebounding.
“Yeah, they’re the best rebounding team in the country. … They go get a bunch of offensive rebounds,” said Oats, before unleashing the backhanded part of his compliment. “When you can sit in the lane for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 seconds at a time, it helps your offensive rebounding quite a bit.”
And with those words, we have set up what should be one of the most anticipated SEC regular-season games in some time.
It’s the defending national champion Gators against a Crimson Tide program that was just in the Final Four in 2024, and lots of eyeballs will be glued to the TV set on Sunday afternoon.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
