Everything Nate Oats said about Alabama's first-round matchup with Hofstra

TAMPA, Fla. — Alabama head coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters at Benchmark International Arena on Thursday afternoon, previewing a first-round matchup with No. 13-seed Hofstra.

Here is everything Oats said about the upcoming 4-13 matchup against the Pride.

Q. Nate, obviously you addressed the Aden situation on the radio, but if he goes back next week and gets his student conduct appeal won, is there a chance we see him later in the tournament?

NATE OATS: You know what, I’m not sure where that’s all going to go. We’ll kind of address things as they come up. But for right now, the team is just preparing to play with who’s at practice, and he’s obviously not there.

We’ll prepare to play without him and address that matter if it comes up.

Q. You kind of dovetailed into my question. How has practice gone without Aden? Can you discuss some of the adjustments you’ve had to make or how they’ve looked?

NATE OATS: I’ll say this: As good as Aden is for us — and he’s been great for us, he’s shot the ball well and done a lot of things — we were best equipped to lose somebody in the backcourt more than anywhere else with this team. Again, you’ve got Wrightsell who’s playing the best basketball of his career. Shoot, he was SEC player of the week I think the second to last week of the season.

Philon is obviously getting as healthy as he can be. Houston Mallette is playing well, Amari Allen is playing well. Like Houston was just talking about, I think Taylor and Noah are playing as good as they’ve played all year. Now you’ve got a little bit more where you don’t have to play Amari down in the front court, you can play Amari exclusively in the backcourt.

Jalil has done a great job prepping, keeping his head to where it needs to be, super talented.

I’m excited to see what some of these guys have. We’ve done a good job in practice, I think, prepping for these — Hofstra has got two very good guards. Cruz Davis and Preston Edmead, as good a combination of backcourt as any — they’re better than most high major back courts when you put the two of them together.

I think we’ve done a good job, and I think we’ve still got plenty of depth. That’s the good thing with making sure — with the way we play, we want to play fast. We usually have pretty good depth. We had great depth in the backcourt, and I think we’ve had 13 different starting lineups, the reason being mainly injuries throughout the course of the year.

Whether it’s the guys out with an injury or whatever reason he’s out for, I think this team is more equipped to handle somebody being out. We’ve had more game time decisions, night-before decisions than any team I’ve ever been associated with.

Q. Speedy Claxton sat up there and talked about how he thinks his bigs and their offensive rebounding almost translates better against a high major opponent. You look at this Hofstra team, the success they’ve had inside, the success they’ve had attacking the glass, what’s your evaluation of that, and what do you do to try to limit it?

NATE OATS: They’re good. They’ve got real size. Sunday is a big shot blocker, rim protector, rebounder. I’ve been at that level. I was at Buffalo for six years before I was a head coach, and having legitimate size inside is something maybe you don’t always have at that level. They have it. But Sunday.

And then — I don’t want to pronounce his name wrong, No. 6, Victory Onuetu — between Sunday and Onuetu, they had 11 O-boards just between the two of them in their last game they played.

Our guys are fully aware. We have had an issue rebounding the ball too many times this year. If we don’t make a concerted effort to go to the glass, box out, it’s going to be a problem. Because if you keep giving their backcourt multiple chances — they make tough shots, so you get them to miss one, great, you did a good job on defense. You have to get the rebound.

And we want to run. Our depth is still there. Our style of play is that we want to play fast. They’re a very slow team that they’re comfortable playing deep into the shot clock. We’d like to get the pace up.

It’s hard to get the pace up and run if you don’t defensive rebound the basketball. So we really got to make sure we’re focused on rebounding the ball.

Q. You touched on Hofstra’s guards a minute ago. Could you elaborate what makes them so effective?

NATE OATS: You know, so Cruz is a lefty — and now I’m thinking both go either way. But Cruz is a lefty and Edmead is a righty. I don’t know which one you call one, which one you call a two, but they both can handle it, shoot it, pass it.

I saw a stat in Edmead, he’s come on really strong at the end of the year. He’s been good for them all year, but they had a stat, he’s the first player in the last 25 years NCAA to do whatever he’s done. They can both shoot it, drive in the paint and pass it.

If you want to kind of double one, trap one, blitz one, you’re leaving the other one playing off a close-out in a rotation.

If a team has one guard that’s great and elite and everybody else plays off him, it’s a lot easier to trap in ball screens, double him. Okay. So all of a sudden you want to trap Cruz, now you’re pulling in Edmead’s man to help on the roll. I’m not so sure how smart that is because now all of a sudden, you’ve got to play him on a long close-out and him attacking a long close-out is an issue.

The fact that they have two of them together makes them both better. The fact that they’re both — Aaron Estrada led our team to a Final Four. He was Player of the Year in that conference for Hofstra, and Cruz’ numbers are better than what Estrada’s numbers were there. I’m not saying he’s better. Speedy would be a lot better answer for who was a better player. But they’re both lefties, and I was fortunate enough to coach Estrada here for a year and we went to the Final Four that year.

But if you just look at the numbers, Cruz has had a better year, and, man, Estrada played really well at this high major level for the year he was with us.

Their guards are good, but this is our sixth NCAA Tournament in a row. You don’t make the NCAA Tournament and play a bad team. If they’re in the NCAA Tournament, they’re going to be good. That’s why there’s not that many teams in the tournament.

They’re very good, and we’re fully aware of how good their backcourt is. And we’re going to have to do a great job one-on-one defense, our help is going to have to be good. And we’re going to have to have different packages to guard them because I don’t think you can just do one thing against these great guards the entire game.

Q. On the Aden front, you mentioned earlier in the week that you wanted to support him, obviously, in spite of everything that’s happening right now. Can you speak to any contact you’ve had with him since maybe the initial moments after the arrest and where that stands?

NATE OATS: Yeah, I’ve met with him in person, talked to him on the phone multiple times. Look, I’m an adult. I’ve made mistakes. We all have things we’d like to do differently.

Now is not the time to ignore a kid that you’ve built a real relationship with. Now is the time he needs more love from the adults in his life than at any point.

When I got into coaching, way back when I first got out of college and I was a Division III assistant making no money and then I went to a high school job in the Detroit area for 11 years, I really — to basically coach for no money for 16 years, you’d better be doing it for the right reasons because you’re losing an awful lot of money spending all the hours, money, time traveling to kids for official visits.

I’ve got to remind myself I’m a high school coach that’s caught some breaks up here. But I don’t want to lose why I got into this thing in the first place.

You get into it to help impact young men’s lives. Well, if you disappear when they make a mistake, I’m not so sure that’s a genuine relationship you’ve built.

I’ve got three daughters. They’ve made mistakes. You don’t disappear on them when they need your help. I won’t be disappearing on him. I talked to him yesterday morning on the phone. I talked to him the night before that. I’ve talked to him every day so far.

I’m going to continue to talk to him, love him, help him through this, and we’ll see where it all takes us.

Q. What kind of progress have you seen from Jalil this season, and how much are you going to lean on him a little more with Aden out?

NATE OATS: Yeah, obviously Aden is playing about 30 minutes. There’s 30 minutes to distribute differently in this game. Jalil has been playing well. The one thing I’ll say about Jalil is he’s super talented. He had the broken foot that he missed so many reps in the off-season. He missed half our off-season.

With the way we play, it’s a lot different than the way most college teams play at least. There’s a lot to be learned in the off-season with playing fast, making the right reads and the paint reads, the rim reads, pick-and-roll reads, close-out reads, all of it that he missed. And he was frustrated as a talented kid like him would naturally be that he wasn’t able to contribute as much as everybody would have liked for him to initially.

But I think he’s done an unbelievable job keeping his attitude right where it needs to be. I love him. He comes in, plays hard, great teammate. I really hope he goes in and plays well — playing well doesn’t necessarily mean just making shots, making highlight plays, which he’s more than capable of, but it’s being locked into the defensive end, impacting winning. That’s the one thing you’ve got to keep emphasizing to these guys that come either out of high school or maybe places they haven’t won at the level we’ve won is what can you do to impact winning.

It’s not all scoring. It’s why we chart as many things as we chart.

I think he’s starting to figure that out. I would love for him to take advantage of this opportunity he’s got in front of him and really play well here this weekend.

Q. How has Amari developed as a player and as a person throughout his freshman season?

NATE OATS: So Amari comes in as a freshman that maybe isn’t as highly ranked as some other kids we’ve brought in. We all knew he had a chance to be really good. Like, I loved him. A guard with size, toughness, competitiveness. He came in right away in the summer and established the fact that he’s not backing down from anybody, that he’s going to compete with everybody, and there was days during the summer he was our best player.

I think you’ve seen that. He hasn’t been elite in every game, but he’s competed at an elite level every game, and he’s fought with some injuries and had to come around.

But with his size, skill, athleticism, competitiveness, toughness, IQ, you combine it all, there’s not many all-around players that can play as many positions as him in the country. I think you’re seeing that by where he’s showing up on draft boards and the amount of interest all the NBA teams are giving him, asking about him.

He’s been a joy to coach. He’s a tough kid from Green Bay, Wisconsin. There hasn’t been too many big-time basketball players come out of Green Bay. So it would be pretty cool to see him succeed, and I think it’s been pretty cool to watch him his freshman year come along the way he’s come along.

Q. What’s the biggest difference stylistically in the offense pace-wise without Aden, and have you noticed any difference in the way Labaron affects and plays basketball without Aden on the perimeter?

NATE OATS: Aden didn’t miss too many games, so go back to when he missed and it wasn’t many. We don’t really have to change the way we play. We had all the injuries all year, and there wasn’t one time when we walked into a game and said, oh, we’re going to try to play a little slower this game, or we’re going to really concentrate on throwing it inside this game because we’re missing Wrightsell or Philon or Holloway or — no, we’re going to play the way we play.

Now, different teams have different coverages in the pick-and-roll and different teams have different strengths. To me, we’re not changing the way we play based on who we have or don’t have. We’re going to change how we attack different coverages based on the way the team we’re playing. What does Hofstra do in pick-and-roll? Where are Hofstra’s better defenders at? Where are Hofstra’s strengths and weaknesses at? There hasn’t been any change at all, to be honest with you, other than we just have one less guy out there in practice.

We’re going to play the way we play and we’re going to attack the way we attack. I think it’s been pretty good for us most of the year.

Q. This is a little off topic and a little lighthearted, but what have you thought of the way Brady has handled the challenges this season?

NATE OATS: Yeah, Brady Goka started with us as a manager, was really good — we’ve got an army of managers, a bunch of kids willing to serve the program, and it’s great having them in. Some are just there to be a part of the basketball program. Some are there to find their way up in the coaching world.

He was one that we knew, came back from my connections in Michigan, and he’s from Michigan, close to Saginaw. Him and Preston have a little debate. Brady claims Saginaw, but it’s really not Saginaw, it’s out in the country by Saginaw. But he came from my connections in Michigan. He came down, was a manager, then he became a grad assistant. Kind of migrated towards the video room, really got into the coaching part.

This is the first year you’ve got replays in college, so we gave it to our video coordinator. He should be good with video, that’s why he’s the video coordinator.

He’s been pretty good. Honestly, I think Brady has been good. I think it’s been more everybody in college basketball figuring out appeals, challenges. Because we appealed some plays that one game, you’d win that appeal and the next game, it’s a more egregious flagrant one than this one and you don’t win it. And then all of a sudden, you turn the TV on and it’s — I can’t figure out what should have been a flag want one and what’s not.

I think in light of everybody being new and figuring it out and everybody is trying to work through it, the referees, people in charge of it all, I think he’s done a pretty good job.

Look, the guy that’s in that role, like, you’d better have some thick skin because if you screw one up, especially — now, the appeals are different. You can screw up an appeal, you just lose the time-out. You can get multiple unlimited appeals. I guess if you run out of time-outs, you can still appeal, you just get a T for calling a time-out you don’t have. You’ll never run out of appeals.

Now, the challenges you only have two, so if you screw up a challenge play — again, the referees are figuring out the rules, too. Because we challenged at Auburn, lost it, lost our challenge for the rest of the game. They called a goal tend against us that was incorrectly called in the last two minutes. And I need to be better aware of the rules, as do the referees, but the refs are supposed to go review that in the last two minutes. And I was about ready to kill Brady because we didn’t have our challenge left, and I couldn’t review it. It actually was supposed to be the referees that review it in the last two minutes.

Look, Brady has been great with it. He’s quick. He’s smart. He gets a little help from Adam Bauman over there. Brian Adams, our one assistant that runs the defense sent out a — we’ve got a coaches’ and GAs kind of group chat. There was another program that their challenge drew behind had some — I think Brian Adams’ direct term was Dorkapalooza over there with all these cool handshakes.

I said, Brady, are we going to get like this with our cool handshake. Just don’t try to do no Dorkapalooza handshake with me after we win an appeal.

We’ll try to win the appeals. We’ll try to use it correctly. We’ll use it to our advantage when we can. I think Brady and Adam and our whole video crew has done a good job with it, but we’re still all trying to figure it out this year.

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