Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats makes tough admission after wild loss to the Tennessee Vols
The Alabama Crimson Tide were on the wrong side of an instant classic against the Tennessee Vols on Saturday night in Knoxville. Alabama led for much of the game, but the Crimson Tide left Rocky Top with a 79-76 loss thanks to a buzzer beating three-pointer from Vols guard Jahmai Mashack. After the game, Alabama […]
The Alabama Crimson Tide were on the wrong side of an instant classic against the Tennessee Vols on Saturday night in Knoxville.
Alabama led for much of the game, but the Crimson Tide left Rocky Top with a 79-76 loss thanks to a buzzer beating three-pointer from Vols guard Jahmai Mashack.
After the game, Alabama head coach Nate Oats admitted that he made a mistake with the way he handle his team's substitutions late in the game.
The former SEC coach of the year told reporters that he subbed out his "bigs" at the wrong time, while also noting that he should've called a timeout before Alabama turned the ball over via a five-second call on the in-bounds play that set up Mashack's game-winner.
"It was a tough way to lose," said Oats. "You gotta give Tennessee a lot of credit for not quitting when we had 'em down nine there midway through the second half. These guys compete hard. We didn't do a great job closing it. I'm gonna take most of the blame in the last 30 seconds. It's on me that [we] subbed our bigs out to get the rebound before I should have. [I] shouldn't have subbed them out until after we secured the rebound. So that was on me. And then I had a chance to call a timeout. Coaches can call timeouts on the underneath out-of-bounds play and at four, I should have called it. I thought we were getting it in and that's on me."
"I was not good for the last 30 seconds today," added Oats. "So I feel like I failed these guys."
It was shocking that Alabama turned the ball over on the in-bounds play under their own basket with 3.8 seconds left in the game — the Crimson Tide had two timeouts remaining. Coaches (or players) almost always call a timeout in that situation when it's obvious that the in-bounds play is being defended well.
That miscue was all Mashack and the Vols needed to pull off the thrilling win.
There were several moments on Saturday night when it seemed that the game wasn't going to end with a Tennessee win, but the Vols battled through some moments of adversity and they were rewarded with one of the most memorable wins of the Rick Barnes era.
