Alabama Basketball: What Nate Oats and Crimson Tide must do

After a disappointing first SEC loss, Nate Oats and the Alabama basketball team must do three things to finish strong.

As Nick Saban says, never waste a failure. The Alabama basketball team has a chance to follow Saban’s advice. Nate Oats will be quick to tell them so, and more. More disappointing than the loss to Missouri, is the fact for well over thirty minutes of play, the Tide got slapped around, out-hustled and out-smarted.

Missouri is a very good, but not great team. On Saturday they played tougher and more sound basketball than did the Crimson Tide. The Tide didn’t quit, but it waited until well into the second half to start playing winning basketball. Nate Oats has a very good team when all components are working. It can be much less when key parts of its game are deficient.

Crimson Tide fans had reason to be alarmed on Saturday. But it was just a loss in one game. Losing once, twice, even three times during the SEC regular-season would be no reason to panic. On Saturday night, Joe Lunardi still had the Tide an NCAA Tournament No. 2 seed.

The Crimson Tide will be favored to win its next four games. All are against teams that have more flaws than the Crimson Tide. Because of the NCAA NET ranking of the four teams, losing to any of them would hurt future NCAA seeding much more than the losses to Oklahoma and Missouri. Fan confidence is justified but the Crimson Tide cannot afford to take any opponent lightly.

For the next four games, and the three more challenging games that follow, attention to detail matters. There are four categories needing improvement. The Crimson Tide can control three of the four.

The one that cannot be controlled is having Herbert Jones and Jordan Bruner healthy. Based on recent comments by Oats, Bruner will probably not be back before the Vanderbilt game. Jones’ lower back and hip problems may linger for weeks. The pair is essential for the team to play its best.

What Alabama Basketball Can Control

• Herbert Jones must be on the court to direct the offense. While far from a traditional lead guard, the Tide’s point-forward provides cohesion to the Tide offense. When fouls push him to the bench, no other Tide player has consistently delivered in Herbert’s role. His defense is also needed, but he must be more careful about committing fouls.
• The entire team, and certain players particularly, must have better shot selection. That includes outside the arc as well as at the rim. One example (by no means the only one) is James Rojas. Rojas had three, three-point attempts against Missouri and missed all three. He has been battling a hand or wrist injury and he appeared to ding it while being fouled on one of the three-point attempts. He went to the line and missed the three free throws. Apologies to James, but as Cecil Hurt tweeted, why do we want a guy who can’t make foul shots, shooting threes?
• When Jay Bilas was talking about the Crimson Tide and the Final Four and the Tide moved to a projected No. 1 seed, it was, to use a Nick Saban term, ‘rat poison.’ Every player on the roster needs to discard the idea of being the ‘hunted’ and go back to all the little things that matter to be a successful ‘hunter.’ Prepare for and play one game at a time and don’t look ahead to anything. Looking ahead leads to over-looking the next opponent and until Bruner and Jones are healthy, the Tide cannot afford to overlook anyone.

Rest easy, Alabama Basketball fans. Nate Oats will address all the above and more.

After the Saturday night games, the Ken Pomeroy rankings had the Crimson Tide unchanged at No. 7 among Division One teams. UPDATED: NCAA NET rankings after Saturday’s games have the Crimson Tide dropping one spot to No. 8.