TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama basketball outscored North Dakota 62-52 in the second half of its 97-90 road win Wednesday night. The Crimson Tide fixed many of its turnover and offensive issues from the first half to pull away from a scrappy Fighting Hawks team that laid it all on the line defending their home court.

However, the Tide’s strong effort on offense was nearly negated by an equally subpar defensive performance. After a 20-3 run that set up Alabama for an opportunity to finally put the game away, it allowed North Dakota to take and make open 3s and claw back into the game. The Fighting Hawks averaged 1.82 points per possession and hit 6 of 16 3-point attempts in the second half. Guard Treysen Eaglestaff finished the game with a career-high 40 points.

After surviving a scare in which it played an incomplete game on both sides of the ball, Alabama is going back to basics. Tide coach Nate Oats wants his team to re-focus after Alabama slipped to No. 57 in adjusted defensive efficiency, according to KenPom.com.

“There’s certain things that you just have to have and if you’re not focused on them in practice and drilling them, they start to go away a little bit,” Oats told reporters Friday. “So that was what we did today, just the beginning of practice and probably going to have to continue to do it, just working on some of the fundamentals. Close-outs, staying in front of the ball, ball pressure, chasing it. Some of the 3s we gave up, guys just weren’t into the ball. They just let them kind of eye them up and shoot it.”

Oats emphasized that the defensive success he’s looking for takes time. He referenced Alabama’s 2023 team, which finished third in the country in defensive efficiency by seasons-end.

“I think our second year when we finished third in the country in defensive efficiency we were 55th either at the beginning of December or the middle of December,” Oats said. “So, we’ve been in a similar spot before and finished top-3. That’s our goal, we’ve got a lot of work to get there. It’s gonna take a ton, but we gotta get back to some fundamentals.”

While Oats is staying patient, he also plans to make his eventual lineup decisions based on how his players respond to the challenge to step up defensively. Alabama used all 11 of its scholarship players Wednesday, something Oats does not plan on sustaining when conference play starts.

With two non-conference games remaining – Kent State on Sunday and South Dakota State on Dec. 29 — Oats made it clear that players have to continue proving their value on defense if they want to keep or earn more minutes the rest of the way. Oats plans to take a long look at which of Alabama’s rotations work the best ater non-conference play wraps up, and defensive impact will be among top metrics considered.

“We’ve gotta have some guys with a sense of urgency on that end of the floor,” Oats said. “I gotta start to play the guys that do have that sense of urgency and we gotta cut the rotation down a little bit anyway so some guys that don’t wanna guard just aren’t gonna play very much anymore.”

Alabama will play its penultimate non-conference game against Kent State at noon Sunday inside Coleman Coliseum. The game will be broadcast on SEC Network.