TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – No. 7 ranked Alabama defeated Creighton 83-75 on Saturday night at Coleman Coliseum to move to 8-2 in the 2024-25 season. Head coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters after the Crimson Tide’s home win. Below is everything Oats said.

Oats’ opening statement…

“Good win. This is a good team. They will win a lot of games in the Big East. It wasn’t necessarily the best game at times, but I thought our boys were resilient. We extended our lead in the first half. I have to give Creighton a lot of credit. They kept pounding. I think they ended the first half with a 21-10 run. So we didn’t close like we needed to. They are good.

“Kalkbrenner is one of the better bigs in the country. He’s big. He has size. You have to pay attention to him in the post. I thought we had a good plan and we largely implemented it. In the end he still had 18 points. Our pick-and-roll defense wasn’t great. They made it clear there in the second half. When we tried to finish the game, we allowed way too many threes. And Ashworth is one of the better guards in the country and we fell asleep with him on a few things. I thought for long periods of the game we were good defensively, and then they’re so explosive that in short periods you fall asleep and they make you pay. They had the 4-point game, several threes. Jackson McAndrew, we didn’t get that right.

“Good win but there is a lot to build on. Got three games left before conference play. I think this will be a victory that will bring widespread success in March, which is why we schedule games like this. Appreciate your coming and plan the series. I think it’s good for both programs and we can learn a little from it. I think Youngblood played. It should last about 15, 16 minutes. He played 16 minutes and knocked the rust off, so to speak. It was nice to see him hit the three-pointer. I think he’ll do a little better than he did tonight when he gets back into the flow and rhythm, but it’s good to see him contribute to a win tonight.”

Oats about Labaron Philon’s attempt at defense…

“He’s a great defender. It’s long. He is sporty. He’s tough. He is competitive. I thought he and Derrion Reid did a good job. Again, Ashworth is one of those guys. 95 percent of the time you do great work, and the five percent of the time you make mistakes, he’s suddenly 20 points ahead of you. He doesn’t miss free throws. He doesn’t miss too many free throws. I liked these guys. Again, when you rely on freshmen as much as we do right now – we only had three guys in double figures and two of them were freshmen, Derrion and Labaron – sometimes they make some mistakes defensive end, and you have to give them just keep teaching and getting better. But I think their intensity, their commitment, their will are at a really high level, and that goes a long way. That’s why I’m proud of both of these guys tonight.”

Oats on Aiden Sherrell taking lots of shots…

“It was the old Moses Malone, where you keep tipping your own miss and keep missing. He had five offensive rebounds. I don’t know if all five of those are due to his own misses, but there are a lot of shot attempts if you just keep jumping and miss the tip-ins. It was nice to see him hit the three-pointer. He was a great boy. It would have been nice if some of the tip-ins had gone in. I think he could have tried to tip-dunk one or two of them. But he will keep coming. He’s a big body. We wanted to keep Cliff fresh. I thought Aiden was the next best guy to Lime Burner. In the end, Kalkbrenner plays 36 minutes. Cliff only played 25 and was somehow able to make up the 25 minutes with the 36, and Aiden Sherrell’s 10 minutes was something like that gap. And I thought he did a good job defensively against Kalkbrenner, which is what we wanted. And he had these three. I want him to continue taking every open three-pointer he gets. We just have to get him to finish a little better at the rim. But he’s coming with me.”

Oats on Mark Sears getting back to doing what he does best…

“I hope so, because I’ll say this: He’s been outstanding in training. Literally going into the Carolina game and since the Carolina game I think he’s been really good, locked in and training hard. In the end he led us in the workers’ standings and is ahead tonight. I liked his efforts. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I felt like – we tell our guys, ‘Just lose yourself in the game.’ He really focused on playing hard, playing the right way, doing the right things , and now he suddenly has his best shooting nights and the highest score. He comes to the edge. He makes free throws. He lost himself in the game tonight because he played the right way and I thought he was really good. I think this is the best game we’ve seen from him since the start of the season. Hopefully this will get him here somehow.”

Oats on how pleased he was with Alabama’s recovery…

“It was good. I thought it could have been better at times. Some of them were mistakes we should have made and then we get the rebounds. But 17-5, pretty good. At 17-5, one would hope that the second-chance point differences were much larger. It was only 14-8, but they gave up some O-boards and just didn’t give up a score. So we did a good job with the glass. We overtook them by 14 points. But we have to do a better job with the O-boards we get. But for the most part I thought the effort was pretty good. Some of the guys could have tried a little harder, but I thought it was pretty good.”

Oatmeal on the confidence I’ve gained during this difficult 7 game stretch…

“I think it’s good. I think it might be the toughest non-conference seven-game stretch in the country. Since I’ve been here, we’ve had pretty tough schedules like that planned. I think that’s it best way to prepare for the SEC game. So I think our guys will be ready. Now we have three games left and they’re not going to be an easy game at North Dakota South Dakota State are both really good programs medium size. Kent State is one of the best programs in the MAC where I’m from. They’ll be ready to go and they’ll be physical. We’ll be back from Christmas at South Dakota State. Hopefully we can get a groove or rhythm going offensively.

“We don’t shoot it really well. We just looked at KenPom. Coach Pannone leads our offense. To be sixth in the country and be as bad as we’re shooting right now is a tribute to the type of shooting and some of the other things we’re doing. But we need to start taking some shots here. Hopefully the next three games will help us get there.

“But after seven games I was pretty happy with it. It would be nice to have those two losses back, especially the one at Oregon. To win this tournament, because we’re talking about winning championships, we were one ball away from winning this thing. But we’re learning from all of these games and there’s a lot of things we can learn from this game and get better for SEC games in January.”

Oatmeal on what Alabama learned while on the road for so long…

“I think it’s a little bit of all of that. It’s definitely true that the chemistry is there as long as we’re on the road. We were in Vegas for eight days. We went on road trips. We even went to the semi-final home game in Birmingham the night before and got to know each other well. I think it’s a great group. Some guys didn’t play as well or didn’t play as many minutes. Look at how Mo Dioubate and Houston were lower players on the minutes lists. These are incredible children. For them it’s all about the team. And we have a lot of people. I think the chemistry was great. I think the mental strength is there. Tonight we don’t shoot very well from three at all and just find ways to win games when we don’t shoot very well. We got to the O-boards and forced a few turnovers. We roughly doubled our points from sales.

“So I think there is a certain mental strength, a certain strength to play away from home as often as we do. Purdue is one of the better areas in the country. I think that’s going to be big for these away games because the SEC is looking really good. We have some big rivalry games coming up that we’ll play really well in hostile environments. I think that helped.”

Oats on Derrion Reid’s piece from a two-way perspective…

“He feels more comfortable. The thing with Derrion is that he missed so much over the summer. First he was with USA Basketball, so he missed the beginning. Then he got injured a few times and missed reps. This makes him feel more comfortable. He finds out what we want from him. He had two O-boards tonight. Shoot, there was a practice day between Carolina and that game where he was the best offensive rebounder on the team. Shoot, one of the best offensive rebounders in the country. If we can bring that energy and that effort and those kind of intangible plays, if you will, he can be a great defender. He can be a great rebounder and a great slasher. He’s a good shooter when he makes the right shots. There are a lot of things he does that fill up the stat sheet. So I will continue to take him with me. I thought he was pretty good. I look at his offensive leverage – we actually played better offensively with him. So he made a difference tonight.”

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