{"id":118795,"date":"2026-01-11T05:47:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/118795\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:47:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:47:07","slug":"nate-oats-talks-alabama-basketballs-loss-to-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/118795\/","title":{"rendered":"Nate Oats talks Alabama basketball’s loss to Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alabama basketball<\/a> had every chance to beat Texas on Saturday. Time and time again, UA pulled it close, only to blow the opportunity to win<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Crimson Tide fell 92-88, dropping to 1-2 to begin SEC play, and taking its second straight defeat. Afterward, Nate Oats went off on his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got guys that don\u2019t care enough to lock in and follow a game plan,\u201d Oats said during his postgame press conference. \u201cLosing doesn\u2019t bother them enough yet. I don\u2019t know how many losses it\u2019s going to take \u2018till it bothers them, but it\u2019s bothering me. It bothers the coaching staff, and as soon as it starts bothering the players enough, I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll change.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the defensive end, Alabama couldn\u2019t get enough stops when it needed to. Texas\u2019 Jordan Pope led all scorers with 28 points, tying his career high.<\/p>\n

Dailyn Swain and Tramon Mark had 18 each for the Longhorns. UT averaged 1.314 points per possession.<\/p>\n

Alabama\u2019s defensive efficiency dropped to 79th in the nation following the loss according to KenPom.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of it starts with effort,\u201d Oats said of the defensive issues. \u201cWant to. Competitive edge. Guys who just don\u2019t want to lose, they\u2019re gonna give you everything they got. Guys are apparently too comfortable with losing right now because they\u2019re not giving us everything they got on that end of the floor. SO I think it starts with having guys that just refuse to lose, to start with.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom there it goes to guys in the moment having some personal pride on stopping their man. Too many blow-bys.Too many isolation plays were just beat one-on-one. Guys not locked in on the help side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another issue for Alabama late in the game was poor free-throw shooting. UA hit 11-of-12 attempts in the first half, but went just 8-for-15 from the line in the second, which became crucial as the referees made their presence known late.<\/p>\n

Oats was asked what went wrong from the charity stripe. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re worried about the wrong stuff,\u201d Oats said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re locked in, you\u2019re locked in. When you\u2019re locked into defense, all you care about is winning the game. And when you\u2019re locked in on the defensive end, then you go to the line and you\u2019re locked in and you\u2019re just focused on winning the game, you\u2019re gonna step up and you\u2019re gonna make your free throws.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when you\u2019re worried about a lot of stuff that\u2019s a distraction and you\u2019re worried about stats and some other stuff and you\u2019re not locked in, that\u2019s when you get to the line and you miss. Especially when you\u2019re a good shooter. Guys that should be making free throws at a high level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alabama travels to Mississippi State on Tuesday to try and get back on track, before a Saturday trip to Oklahoma. Oats did offer some hope that his team would improve, drawn from the team that just beaten the Crimson Tide.<\/p>\n

Texas coach Sean Miller had called out his team after its previous loss to Tennessee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt bothered Texas,\u201d Oats said. \u201cTexas lost two in a row and started 0-2 (in the SEC). That team looked a lot different than the team that played at Tennessee. So it obviously bothered them enough to change. So hopefully at some point it bothers our guys enough that they\u2019ll invest on the defensive end of the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alabama basketball had every chance to beat Texas on Saturday. Time and time again, UA pulled it close,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51869,22974,29183,9764,154,27,29,28,4778],"class_list":["post-118795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-alabama-basketball","tag-bkc","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-sec","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-ut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}