Nate Oats says Clifford Omoruyi comments were not referencing Johni Broome

Nate Oats praised his player Clifford Omoruyi, who battled through an injury to help Alabama defeat Texas A&M, 94-88, but some thought there were more to his comments. Omoruyi finished with 7 points and 10 rebounds in the game after dealing with an ankle injury.

I’ll say a lot about Cliff, man,” Oats said after the game. “A lot of guys would have just sat that one out after they rolled their ankle like he did. And he manned up, wanted to play, wanted to be there for his teammates. He ends up with 10 rebounds in 16-plus minutes, and you can’t say enough about it because we ended up getting 54 and he got about 20 percent of our rebounds. Good game for him.

Those comments were perceived as a shot about Auburn star player Johni Broome, who also suffered an ankle injury. Oats said Monday that wasn’t the case at all, as he didn’t know that Broome was even injured at the time.

“When I referred to Cliff being tough coming back from the ankle injury, I had nothing in my head at all about Johni Broome’s injury,” Oats said, via Rivals. “When I saw the video of Johni Broome’s injury it looked like he broke it. Significantly different injuries. Saying one of our guys is tough does not insinuate somebody from the other team is not.”

Oats expects Omoruyi to be ready to go tomorrow against Ole Miss on Tuesday at the Coleman Coliseum.

Mark Kern