Nate Oats tears into Alabama over transition defense, explains benching the starters in second half
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Nate Oats ripped into his team early in the second half of Wednesday night’s 88-68 win over South Carolina. Alabama, Oats said after the game, had played with its food 1 too many times and Oats had finally reached his breaking point. He subbed all of his starters out of the game after just 2 minutes and 27 seconds of play. But results weren’t immediate. Alabama gave up a layup at the rim off a made basket at the other end of the floor, Oats called for time, and met his players near mid-court.
He was quite unhappy.
Alabama led South Carolina 45-28 at the halftime break in its first SEC road game of the year. Four quick points coming at the rim to begin the second half drew Oats’ ire, and a turnover/foul sequence from Mark Sears and Jarin Stevenson caused Oats to flip the lineup on the floor entirely.
“That had definitely been building. We’ve had awful starts to the second half, particularly when we’ve had a lead. It’s like they get comfortable or just kind of play around with it,” Oats said after the game. “That’s not how we do things around here. We’re playing every possession no matter what the score is. We’re trying to get stops. I mean, I think they started on a 9-6 run. Giving up layups in transition.
“We just didn’t look like we were ready to start the second half, and I’ve seen that too often and I had enough of it. So we subbed, and then that wasn’t quite good enough. The next group gave up a transition bucket, and then we called the time out and I got it straightened out after that.”
The Crimson Tide settled down a bit after the timeout. Following the Zachary Davis dunk, South Carolina made only 2 shots from the field over the next 7 minutes.
Alabama pushed its lead to 20 and South Carolina never got closer than 14 points the rest of the way.
The victory moved the Crimson Tide to 13-2 on the season. They have opened 2-0 in conference play.
“Good first road game for us in the SEC,” Oats said. “I thought our guys answered the bell pretty well.”
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
