Nate Oats: Alabama has proven its style of play can win in NCAA Tournament
Nate Oats and Alabama play a different style of basketball compared to others. There’s analytics involved, different philosophies, etc.
But as the old saying goes, it’s so crazy it just might work. Oats and the Crimson Tide now have a Final Four date with defending champion UConn.
Oats was asked if the Final Four run made him and the program feel vindicated.
“That’s a great question, because a lot of people question, can you win big in March shooting all the 3s you shoot,” Oats said. “How many did we shoot tonight? For all the naysayers, is 36 too many?
“16 out of 36 ain’t bad. 48 points from the 3-point line ain’t too bad. So, look, it’s not — here’s the thing people don’t understand: We’re not trying to shoot 50 3s, we’re trying to take the most efficient shots we can. So we’re 1.29 today.”
Oats went into more detail regarding the pros and cons of the style.
Our effective field goal percentage was pretty good,” Oats said. “We took two non-rim 2s. We didn’t finish at the rim as well as we should have. I thought we blew some easy layups we should have made in the first half.
“Our analytics company — got a third-party analytics company we use, they were here with us for this run — they told me at the half, we were winning the game by 11 on expected value, expected points. Just keep doing what we’re doing.”
The analytics studied by Oats give a prediction for each game and the Crimson Tide strive to hit those marks.
“I told the guys that The guys expected value, we’re winning this game by 11,” Oats said. “We’ve just got to make — they’re taking tough shots and happen to be making them. We’ve got some easy layups, and we’re missing them. We have to finish at the rim and just keep doing what we’re doing. We shot up and made a few 3s in the second half. 10-of-15 at the second half ain’t bad.”
Is Alabama the first to do something like this? Not necessarily. But Oats led the school to its first Final Four appearance in program history with this method.
“I think you can win playing this way,” Oats said. “They win playing this way in the NBA. We’ve just proven you can make a Final Four run.
“And you know what, UConn is a pretty good team and they play similar. They play through the post a lot, but Danny is big on offensive efficiency, playing the right way, getting the right shots. Their defense is a lot better than ours. We have to figure how to beat them. But I think more college teams are starting to play more efficient style basketball like we’ve been playing.”