NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - TEXAS A&M-CC VS ALABAMA

March 15, 2023

Nate Oats

Legacy Arena

Alabama Crimson Tide

Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: Okay. We are ready for Coach Nate Oats. Coach, if you would, give us an opening statement, and we'll take your questions.

COACH OATS: We're excited to be playing in Birmingham. When they announced first two rounds would be in Birmingham, we knew we would have to play well to be able to get to choose our site. Players have done a great job putting together a good season so we could play close to Tuscaloosa so our fans could come support us. We're excited, first time in program history to be No. 1 seed. Excited to come in and try to win a couple games here in Birmingham. You know, we watched the Corpus Christi game last night. They are a good team. It's been done before that a 16 has beat a 1. Players are well aware of that. As a coach, I have been on the other side of this. Not at 16-1. But we were 14 playing a 3-seed when I was at Buffalo against Arizona. They were loaded at the time. So I kind of shared my experience being the lower seeded team coming in, what they were going to be thinking. My assistant Charlie who just got it will job at Georgia Southern. Congrats to him. He's done an unbelievable job for us in 4 years. He was an assistant at Iowa State when they were in a 3-14 game and got upset. So we've had experiences on both sides. We shared with these guys. Just finished practice. I think our guys are ready to go. I think we'll be locked in, focused on the scouting report, you know, when the stage gets bigger the focus on the smaller details becomes much more important. And that's what we have been trying to get our guys to think about, realize, just focus on the little details, and they have been doing a good job at that. We're excited to get the tournament started tomorrow and see where it goes from there.

Q. Coach, probably should have asked this after the game on Sunday. We didn't see Nimari or Dom.

COACH OATS: Listen, that was a deal where we're trying to -- it's hard to play 11 guys in every game. We kind of went with the guys that are playing well. Stuff started out great. We just kind of rolled with the guys that were playing well at the time. They are both 100% healthy. Thought Nimari's had two great practices, would anticipate seeing him early tomorrow based on those last two practices. And how focused he's been in video sessions and everything. I think Dom is playing really hard, and we'll play him as needed. But there's nothing wrong with either one of them. Kind of one of those deals. Gurley didn't play in two of our last four regular season games and he averaged 20 plus minutes in the SEC Tournament. And played really well for us. We have a really good culture of guys staying engaged and focused and keeping their heads right and being able to play. I thought Nimari's attitude on the bench was unbelievable. Dom has been great all year. Nimari has been great, so I would anticipate those guys playing.

Q. You mentioned the UMBC Virginia game. How did you bring it up with your players? How much did you bring it up? And how did you think this team going back to November, December has handled playing some opponents that might not be the bigger names.

COACH OATS: I think we've done well. You know, we have never come out and not taken those opponents seriously. When you think about one of our better nonconference opponents was Liberty. I thought our guys came out and played really well. Really focused on the scouting report that game. We haven't talked in depth with the Virginia deal. We just mentioned it. It happend before. Don't think that you are a one seed you are guaranteed to come out of the first round. It's not guaranteed. It's happened already. Let's be aware of the fact this team -- and they are number one in their league in offensive and defensive efficiency, both. They are a good team. They play hard. They have good players. They are a well-coached team. Coach Lutz, I've known Coach Lutz, good friends with Coach McDermott at Creighton. He coached under McDermott, known him for a while. He does an unbelievable job. They have this program headed in the right direction. We just made our players aware of the fact that it's been done before just to kind of heighten their attention to detail if that makes sense.

Q. Coach, of all the teams you have had in the NCAA Tournament, do you feel like this year's team is one of the best teams you have had poised to make a deep run in the tournament?

COACH OATS: Yeah, I do. I think we have a maturity about us, a camaraderie, a cohesiveness, the chemistry is great. There's literally nobody jealous about anybody else on this team, which is rare at this level. And the talent level is high. So, you know, the more you guys get to know our group, I think the more you are going to love them. Because they really are truly genuiny concerned about their teammates, and they love each other. So, you know, the group we had two years ago I thought was prime, too. You know, but we shot 12/25 from the free-throw line against UCLA and lost in overtime. We win that game who knows what happens from there. We had a pretty good group two years ago. This group is similar, but they are definitely different. I know we're younger, but I don't think youth means immature. We have a lot of younger mature guys. Noah Clowney, Brandon Miller, Jaden Bradley, Rylan. All four of those freshmen are really mature. And I like the maturity of this group. And like I said, just the chemistry of this group is really tight and really close.

Q. We all talk about you guys being so close to home and being able to pack the arena with your fans. Is that an even bigger deal given some of the treatment you all have received from other arenas around the SEC the last couple months?

COACH OATS: Look, it's always nice to play in front of your own fans. I think it gives you a little extra energy. This isn't technically a home game, but I sure hope that Legacy is packed out like a home game, and it's been nice to play in front of our own fans and some friendly fans in Coleman. I hope we get a similar treatment here at Legacy.

Q. Nate, a few minutes ago I noticed something that I have never seen before in 20 years of doing this. An armed security guard accompanying Brandon to the podium. I was curious the thinking is behind that. And how often do you have security with him right now and when did it start?

COACH OATS: If you guys saw some of what I've seen sent his way, I think you would understand why that's the case. And I don't want to get into all that. The entire situation, as you know, is just a heart-breaking situation on all accounts. But some of the messages from people that can sit behind fake email addresses, but who knows whether they are real or not, that I've seen, something that nobody would ever want their son -- I treat my players like my own sons -- I don't have a son, I have three daughters. But I put myself in his parent's shoes and our administration has seen the stuff that I've seen, and it's appropriate. It's nothing that a college kid should have to go through. If you were able to see what I've seen then you would understand why that's going on right now.

Q. Coach, a year ago in San Diego we had Jahvon went down with a knee injury. I talked to Lyle Cain this morning, he said six months is not normal for a comeback. What does it show behind closed doors that people didn't see with the recovery and he's clicking right now at the right time it seems like..

COACH OATS: Dr. Cain is one of the best in the business. We're fortunate to have in my opinion to have the best sports doctors in the country here in Birmingham that are our team doctors. With the help of Lyle Cain, our trainer Clarke Holter, we got a new strength coach this year, Henry Barrera. All those guys, the team of people that helped him come back . And most important thing is Jahvon's will to recover himself. He worked his tail off. I saw him on the side. He worked hard. And then he was willing to come back when maybe his game wasn't "perfect". Some guys would have continued to sit out until they felt -- no, he came back and wanted to jump back in with this group. And I talked about how tight knit and close and the chemistry with this group has been. And he wanted to come in and help his teammates. The quicker he was able to get on the floor, the more he could the rust -- you only get the rust knocked off so much in practice. When he came for the South Alabama game and he was cleared and ready to go. We kind of got up a large enough -- "You want to get minutes in this game?" He's like, "yeah, let's do it." So I thought that was pretty cool. We got them in that quick. You see how well he's playing now -- I don't know if he's playing as well now as he is if we didn't get him started when we did. He went through some slumps. In your mind if you're coming back from an injury, you have to be able to fight through the fact that it's going to take a little bit to get more comfortable. So he went up, came down. He's on an upward trajectory right now with this play. And it's needed. Because we need it. He was great. I thought he was maybe the best player on the floor against A&M. He did an unbelievable job defensively against Wade Taylor. One of the best guards in our league, one of the better guards in the country and he was going on the offensive side of the ball too in that game.

Q. Nate, you mentioned Tuesday not knowing your opponent for that practice. Just you guys were going to work on ourselves a little bit. What were some of the points of emphasis? Or what were things you guys coming into these games were focusing on?

COACH OATS: I think on offense when the ball is moving we're better. We want to make sure the ball is moving. We call it our point-five game. Once we force an advantage, the first guy to touch the ball out of the advantage has half a second to make his decision, whether he's going to shoot, drive, or make the next pass. And that next guy has point five to do that. We want the ball popping. Worked on that. We got shooting drills, advantage drills to work on that. Defensively we worked on getting some individual defense backed down. Team defense is always best when your individual defense is at it's highest level. And worked a little bit on transition. When your practices only come a day after a game or day before a game, you don't want to get up and down the floor a whole lot. We were able to get up and down the floor. Make sure our transition is tight. We play in transition a lot. Some games we were less efficient than others. We tried to work on a little bit of that. That is really about it. We didn't want to go too long. We wanted to make sure our legs were fresh. We need to make sure they are fresh for both those games, provided we get by the first game.

Q. Coach, talk about the success your team has had this season, knowing you are the number one team, ultimately the team to beat in this tournament. How do you block out the outside noise and what's been the motivation game in and game out to try to make a deep run?

COACH OATS: Yeah. Our guys have been really mature about kind of focusing on the task at hand. So, you know, how do you play well tomorrow? Well, you practice great today. How do you make sure you practice great today? You make sure your mind is where your feet are at. Our video session last night, our guys were great. A lot of guys stayed on and studied video on their own last night because they. They had great questions during our video session this morning . Our video session this morning, they had a lot of good comments. Our coaches bring stuff. We are open enough. If you players have points you want to make, ideas you got, bring them. Coaches are here to help you guys get better and make you the best you can be. I think it's the mentality we are all in this together, we're trying to get to be the best we can be, and let's just make sure we can focus and have a great practice. I thought we had a really good practice. We only had an hour. We're going to get 40 minutes to shoot, so we want to make sure they are fresh. I think great practices, great video sessions lead to playing well, and I think our players have done that all year.

Q. Nate, we've talked a lot this season, but you know the intangibles from the team. You know when you have basketball IQ, you know when you have talent, but I know you wanted to create a winning culture. At what point in the season do you see that come to fruition for a team, and also how much of that is encouragement from the coaching staff or just the guys that you have in the locker room?

COACH OATS: Quick story to talk about that. We had the foreign trip this summer. That helped everybody get tighter, closer. They're over in Europe in non-English speaking countries hanging out. I thought we developed a pretty good bond through the summer. And the rules in Division 1 are you get two either scrimmage exhibition, whatever, before you play real games. We had a closed scrimmage at TCU to open up our first -- we won the three games over in Europe so everybody is feeling good. Everyone had great culture in the summer. Well, first time we played somebody else, I think we were down 30 at the half at TCU. We had a lot of freshmen and a lot of new players. I think 75% of our scoring is coming from newcomers. First time we played somebody -- and TCU had the most production back of any major team in the country. It was a great scrimmage to get. That was part of the plan. I didn't plan on losing the half by 30, but we did. Then the second half went a little better. Brandon kind of asserted himself, and we're not going to get drilled like we did in the first half, so he was better but we still lost it. So we got back, you know, nothing to do with the coaches, completely the players. They had a players'-only meeting the next day. Noah Gurley, Jahvon Quinerly, some of the guys that have been around. This is not what we envisioned. This is not what we said what we're going to be about. This is not who we are. I don't know what was said in the meeting, but at that point, I knew the culture was headed -- we hadn't won a game. We just got drilled. I knew we were about the right stuff because the next practice completely flipped. Then we had our next exhibition game against Southern Illinois, who is a good team, and we played much better. We came out in the first game and looked completely different than we had in that closed scrimmage. Maybe the next one after -- we only played in Birmingham once this year. It was against Gonzaga, and we weren't very good. Turned into an offensive shootout. There was no defense being played on our side. We got back from that game, we lost the game. I kind of asked the players, like, "What happened?" Just, we didn't, you know, we didn't do what we needed to on the defensive end. I said when we're playing defense, the offense a lot of times takes care of itself. We're one of the best teams in the country. When we forget about playing defense, we're a really average team. So they kind of admitted to me exactly what I would have told them, but it's a lot better when you ask them and they come up with it themselves. Really some of our freshmen were saying that. So when we lost to Gonzaga -- sometimes you need a wake-up call. We kind of got ourselves woke up. And the loss at Oklahoma was another one. We haven't had many losses, but I felt like the response after every one let us just getting better at stuff we weren't good at in those losses and make sure we fix it. And that it doesn't rear up again. I think we have a pretty good job at that. Couple of the stories that I have for you on the question that you asked. Appreciate your time. Thanks.