Everything Nate Oats said after Alabama's 87-80 loss to Purdue

The No. 8-ranked Alabama men’s basketball team lost to No. 2 Purdue, 87-80, on Thursday night at Coleman Coliseum. After the Crimson Tide’s first loss of the 2025-26 season, head coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters. Here is everything Oats said after the top-10 matchup.

Oats’ opening statement…

“First off, I want to thank our fans. That was a great environment. They came early, they were loud. They did what they needed to do for us to get the win. We needed stops, they were loud.

Thank the student section, I thought it was great. So a big-time environment. I think our program’s got to the point where the guys deserve to play in front of an environment like that, and I appreciate them coming out. Next time, hopefully, we can give them a little bit better performance.

“I gotta give Purdue a ton of credit. They’re tough. I think they’re one of the most disciplined — they run their stuff in the half court. They know how to attack all your coverages. But at the end of the day, the tougher team won tonight. They all rebounded us by 24. It’s embarrassing. In life, in sports, the team that plays harder, people that work harder, in whatever field you’re in, should win. And they won. They deserved to win. They were tougher. My guess is they prepared better coming into the game than we did, and we’re gonna have to fix some stuff.

“I mean, their offensive rebounding rate was 48%. They lead the country any year. We’ve got major problems on the backboard. Their starting frontcourt at 24 rebounds; our starting frontcourt at six. So that’s a problem. The other issue is their point guard, and Braden Smith’s, I think he’s the best point guard in the country. I mean, we’ll see how it plays out, but I think he showed it tonight. I mean, 29, seven and four is pretty good. He had seven rebounds; our leading rebounder has four. What they list him at, I don’t want to disrespect him at all. I’m guessing he’s 5-10, 5-9. A 5-10 point guard has seven rebounds, and our starting frontcourt has six combined. 

“So we’ve got issues on the glass. We knew it. In our exhibition games, we knew it. In our inner-squad scrimmages, we knew it. Up at St. John’s, we did a pretty good job. We out-rebounded them by one. I thought Amari Allen came in, was outstanding from the guard spot. Taylor Bol Bowen was exactly what we needed him to be against St. John’s. But for whatever reason, we couldn’t do it tonight. So until we figure out how to make tougher plays, rebound the basketball at a much higher level, we’re gonna have a hard time beating the best teams in the country. And I think it showed tonight.”

Oats on how they can work on toughness to avoid another rebounding performance like this…

“I think that’s gotta be a player-led deal. I mean, as coaches, we’ve been doing a lot of rebounding stations, rebounding drills in practice. At the end of the day, we give our players a quote Charles Barkley said about, talk about positioning, all this on rebounds. At the end of the day, it’s about desire. Like you either want the ball or you don’t. And like Kauf, really good player. At South Dakota State, he had a pretty good game against us last year. But I don’t think he’s more athletic than our bigs. He had 11 rebounds tonight. He had three offensive rebounds. So Kaufmen-Renn, he’s tough, athletic, and he’s destroyed us two years in a row now. But eight offensive rebounds, 15 rebounds total. Those guys got a desire to go get the ball. They obviously got some technique, they know how to wedge in, they know all this. But at the end of the day, if you got the size and athleticism and you wanna go get a rebound, you’re gonna go get a rebound. And we just, we’re gonna have to determine whether we wanna be the tougher team, because I think the tougher team usually wins, and the tougher team won tonight, for sure.”

Oats on what Purdue did defensively to prevent dribble penetration…

“I think they did a pretty good job. They collapsed heavy. We got a lot of threes off. We made 10 threes in the first half. That’s what kept us in it, because we couldn’t rebound for anything. So when you collapse as heavy as they did, you’re gonna give up threes. I mean, we got 44 threes off. If we didn’t make those 16 threes, we had no shot at winning this thing. So they know — I mean, they’re not as athletic as we are. So they have to do it a different way. He’s smart. He’s one of the best coaches in the country. He’s been that for 20 years now. So they’re skilled. They’ve got really skilled offensive players that maybe don’t have the same foot speed as some of our guys do, so they packed it in pretty tight. They tried to keep it out of the lane. I think when we drove it, we were able to spray it and get a decent amount of shots off. 

“I mean, now the second half, I didn’t think we moved as well as we did in the first half. Thought our offense slowed down quite a bit. But we were still 71% at the rim. The issue is we took too many non-rim twos, which is not a lot, but we were 2-for-8 on non-rim twos. And the threes just didn’t — I didn’t think we got as good of looks in the second half. And maybe they made some adjustments. I’ll have to go back and watch the film. But we went from 48% from three in the first half, because they really collapsed to keep us out of the paint, like you said. But second half, we only shot 26% from three. 

“So if we shot the same in the second half as we did in the first half, we would have won the game despite our rebounding. But we didn’t deserve to win. They deserved to win the game. In sports, it’s nice when the team that deserves to win wins, and they deserve this win tonight.”

Oats on what he saw from an execution standpoint in the last two minutes…

“I mean, we kind of trapped them, but still, on some ball screens, they did a pretty good job adjusting to it. Braden Smith’s gonna find an answer to anything you do. And we stayed in it a little too long, I thought. They hit the pocket, scored, shoot, about three or four straight possessions. We had to get out of it. That was a little earlier, I think, actually, though. We had gotten out of it. I gotta go back and look at the last minute and a half. I mean, look, it was 80-80.

They scored to go up 82-80, if I remember. I think Labaron went to the line with about 1:15-ish, 1:16 maybe, is what my memory serves correctly, and misses the front end of a 1-and-1. We got a chance to tie it with 1:15 to go, and then go down and get a stop. He misses, they score, we get a bad possession on offense. I think maybe we missed, I can’t remember exactly how that all went. 

“But yeah, I mean, to get out-rebounded like we did, and for Baron to be at the line with a chance to tie it with 1:15 to go, we were fortunate to be in that spot with 1:15 to go. But I can’t even remember exactly how they scored. It went from 80-80 to 82-80, we missed the free throws, and then I think when we fouled Braden, and he’s not gonna miss free throws. That’s what happened. We missed, he made two, and I think we had to foul at that point. It was like 30 seconds to go after we missed a shot. So we just kind of lost it at that point, and we had to start fouling. They made free throws.”

Oats on if Davion Hannah is still not 100% healthy…

“No, he’s not 100%, but I maybe should have played him more, because he is tough. He can rebound the ball. His tailbone’s still not 100%, but he could have played more. And that’s probably a mistake on my part, to be honest with you.”

Oats on if he felt like the guards didn’t try to draw fouls and get in the paint enough…

“Yeah, for sure. I thought some of our rim reads weren’t great, particularly that one late, when Labaaron kind of got almost to the rim and had Trelly wide open in the corner. Baron can get in the paint pretty easily. I mean, he’s one of the best guards penetrating in the country. And maybe, I didn’t think he attacked enough, to be honest with you. I thought he had some matchups he could have gone at. I remember he caught it in the corner on a guy that had no business guarding him, and he just threw it back up top. There’s multiple times I didn’t really think we attacked them like we needed to, to get down. Because if you do attack, they’re gonna collapse. I mean, they have to. They don’t guard great one-on-one, so they got good team defense. And if you collapse, we got shooting all over the floor. So yeah, I didn’t like our aggressiveness off the dribble at times, particularly in the second half.”

Oats on scheduling St. John’s and Purdue back-to-back…

“It’s kind of just the way it worked out. We pretty much had the schedule done and tacked the St. John’s game on. It was the only day open in the Garden. But I don’t mind it. I mean, shoot, if you’re trying to win at a high level in the NCAA Tournament, you’re gonna have to go back-to-back on two really good teams. And shoot, we got another really good one. Illinois looked great against Texas Tech, was that last night, was it? Yeah. Shoot, they’re bigger than Purdue almost, I think. So if we don’t get our rebounding fixed at Illinois, we’re not gonna be able to win that game either. And then we got Gonzaga after that. Gonzaga looked pretty good against Creighton the other night. 

“So we got four really good games in a row. We will find out what we’re good at, what we gotta improve at. Tonight, we’ve been sounding the alarm on the rebounding deal. We got exposed tonight. Our guys are gonna have to decide whether they wanna have a good season or whether they’re gonna get out-toughed every game the rest of the year.”

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