Tennessee suffered a brutal loss to Alabama on Saturday night, despite being up by double digits with less than 10 minutes to go. A common theme for Tennessee this season is blowing a strong first half, slowly but surely in the second half. Alabama's head coach, Nate Oats, went in-depth on how Alabama was able to chip away at Rick Barnes' squad's lead.
The first step for Alabama to complete the comeback was to start locking in on the defensive end. Nate Oats gave credit to Assistant Brian Adams for his adjustments. Then, Alabama needed to run an unorthodox lineup.
“We showed some adaptability on defense. We were able to change up," said Oats. "Coach (Brian) Adams did a really good job, I think, making adjustments. We weren’t getting stops. At some point, we had to figure out we need to outscore them a little bit. We kind of went with the four-guard lineup with Amari (Allen) at the four. Between (coaches) Preston (Murphy), BA (Adams), (Chris) Fleming's good suggestions. I thought the coaching staff did a really good job."
Oats then emphasized Alabama's ability to hunker down on defensive rebounding. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough.
“The players made things difficult on them; some of the shots they had to take. They still had way too many O-boards. Had 16 in the first half, only had nine in the second half. Nine is still a lot. No coach should be happy with giving up 25 boards, but we did cut it from 16 to nine. It was enough to win the game," said Barnes.
And of course, difficult shot making made a huge difference for the Tide.
"There’s a lot of stuff we can look at that went wrong, and we’ve got to get better at it, and we know that, particularly our defensive rebounding. But the fight that these guys had to stay in the game, the shot-making that (Latrell) Wrightsell goes 6-of-9 from 3, has 25 points, leads us in plus/minus with plus 14."
How did Tennessee let this happen?
The biggest thing that Tennessee will be kicking themselves for was the inability to convert on second, or even third, chance points. I mean, how often did it happen that Tennessee had multiple chances to get a bucket at the rim and they didn't? Jaylen Carey, J.P. Estrella, and Felix Okpara are all really good players, but man, sometimes they cannot hit a layup. The Vols were 12-29 at the rim on Saturday night, which is nowhere near good enough to win.
Tennessee also grew careless in transition down the stretch, and Alabama made them pay by knocking down a few momentum-shifting threes, the kind that feel like daggers when you’re protecting a lead. Sure, there were a couple of questionable calls, but this loss can’t be pinned on the officials. Ament’s absence certainly hurt, but Tennessee still had every opportunity to close this game out, and simply didn’t.
All we can do now is hope the Vosl bounce back in the final two games of the year and begin to build off the momentum for March Madness.