I try to avoid being overly critical of Nate Oats. Frustrating losses like the one Alabama experienced on Sunday against Florida tend to bring out immediate emotion that is best left offline. Clarity tends to come after emotion has been allowed to pass.
Oats has certainly earned the benefit of the doubt in Tuscaloosa. I'm in the camp that Oats is the best basketball coach Alabama has ever had. He's certainly led the program to heights us longtime followers never thought imaginable. Three straight Sweet 16s, back-to-back Elite Eights, a Final Four, and multiple SEC Championships over the last six seasons make it difficult to be too critical.
But Oats wants to win a National Championship. And he has burdened fans with expectations they never thought possible. And when you have the confidence that Oats has, and you're going to say things like he's said this season when he confidently proclaimed he thought Alabama had the team to win it all this year, then you have to produce better results than we saw on Sunday against Florida. And better results than we've seen in SEC play, period.
Alabama is now 4-4 in the league through eight games. That includes inexplicable home defeats at the hands of Texas and Tennessee, along with road losses against Florida and Vanderbilt. For the first time in over two years, the Crimson Tide won't be ranked in Monday's AP Poll.
At just 14-7, Alabama is trending toward the 6-line in March Madness. This team looks more like a one-and-done with a Sweet 16 ceiling than the national title contender Oats thought he had.
"We've got to look in the mirror," Oats said after Sunday's loss. That starts with him.
Nate Oats put together a flawed roster with several Transfer Portal misses
Alabama's Transfer Portal class has left a lot to be desired. While Taylor Bol Bowen has been a nice addition from Florida State, the three additional transfers haven't made much of an impact. Tarleton State's Keitenn Bristow has only played in 10 games due to various injuries, producing just four points and four rebounds per night when he has played.
And then Noah Williamson (Bucknell) and Jalil Bethea (Miami) have been two of the biggest portal busts Oats has brought to Tuscaloosa.
Williamson's struggles led to Oats pursuing the return of Charles Bediako, which has gotten Alabama blasted publicly and has not made nearly the difference that some may have believed. Alabama is now 1-2 in the three games Bediako has played.
The defensive end of the court has been the biggest issue. Alabama surrendered a baffling 72 points in the paint to Florida, and now ranks 66th in KenPom's defensive efficiency metric. No National Championship team has ever ranked outside the Top 25 defensively in the KenPom era.
Alabama's two SEC Championship-winning teams both ranked 3rd in defensive efficiency. They've come nowhere close to that in the three seasons that have passed since that 2023 team went into the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 overall seed.
Alabama's elite offense the past two seasons led to consecutive trips to the Elite Eight and the 2024 Final Four, but the shortcomings on that end kept it from being a legitimate threat to win the whole thing.
Perhaps it'll take some fundamental changes to defense over the offseason to change things. Maybe more of a focus on defense in high school recruiting and the Transfer Portal. Perhaps some philosophical changes and a new "defensive coordinator" on the staff.
For the rest of this season, Oats must stick to his guns. He's tried too hard to match opposing frontcourts by playing Aiden Sherrell and Charles Bediako together, which has produced mediocre results.
Oats needs to go back to one big lineup and force other teams to keep up. Alabama is finally getting healthy, which should allow Oats the luxury of playing his best lineups instead of trying to piecemeal it all together.
The ceiling of this team is certainly lower than Oats thought. But he can do a better job of putting his players in better positions to succeed than he did in Sunday's loss to Florida.