Nate Oats blamed himself for Alabama basketball's loss at Tennessee

Nate Oats has arguably already established himself as the best coach in the history of Alabama basketball. He has led the program to unprecedented heights, culminating in the program's first Final Four appearance a year ago. He has many, many more good moments than bad during his tenure in Tuscaloosa.

That doesn't make him immune to criticism, however, and quite frankly Alabama's loss to Tennessee on Saturday can be placed squarely at the feet of the Tide's head coach.

Winning a game in Knoxville is never easy. Alabama was an underdog on Saturday for a reason, but they had every opportunity to win the game and didn't execute down the stretch.

A plethora of coaching mistakes down the stretch for Alabama

The final 30 second was as bad as it gets from a coaching perspective. Alabama had just blown a four-point lead thanks to a and-1 foul on Grant Nelson (that I would be remiss if I didn't say was a questionable call), and then an offensive rebound off a free throw miss and a subsequent foul on Jarin Stevenson that allowed Tennessee to tie the game with two more foul shots.

That was Oats' first mistake down the stretch. He should have subbed Stevenson out of the game before the first free throw and gotten Cliff Omoruyi on the floor. Mo Dioubate was on the bench in that situation too, and Dioubate is one of the best rebounders in the country.

You can forgive Oats for not taking a timeout as Alabama brought the ball up the court with just a little over 30 seconds to play and less than a one second differential between the shot and game clocks. He rarely takes timeouts in those situations, preferring to let his teams play it out down the stretch. Like it or not, that's been his strategy his entire career.

But you have to figure the plan was to get the ball in the hands of Mark Sears, who just a couple minutes earlier had made a miraculous shot-clock beating three pointer to put Alabama up by three. Your best player should touch the ball in that situation, and he didn't. Instead, freshman Labaron Philon attacked the basket and got himself in trouble, leading to a tie-up with 3.8 seconds to play with the possession arrow favoring the Crimson Tide.

Oats took a timeout from there to draw up a play, but that play inexplicably left Philon as the in-bounder. Philon had already turned the ball over once and made a couple of questionable decisions on underneath out of bounds plays earlier in the game. With the way Tennessee plays defense, that's just a tough situation to put a freshman in with the game on the line.

Oats compounded that mistake by not using one of his final two timeouts and allowing a five-second call to give possession back to Tennessee. The Vols made him pay for that mistake with a Jahmai Mashack game-winning three at the buzzer.

But you don't have to listen to me tell it. You can hear it from Oats himself:

Oats took full accountability for the defeat, frankly saying that he was not good enough and failed the team down the stretch. It's impossible to argue with him. Again, Oats is an excellent coach who has done a lot for his university and will continue to do so.

And in fairness, Alabama made plenty of mistakes that allowed the game to come down to the last 30 seconds anyway. They missed too many free throws and only shot 44.4% from two-point range, down from the 60% mark they've shot on average this season.

But in close games you need high level execution from your players, and you cannot afford coaching mistakes. Unfortunately for Alabama, they got neither down the stretch and it cost the Crimson Tide a game it should have won.