Alabama basketball hosted ESPN College GameDay for the first time in school history. The program has made its way to Tuscaloosa ahead of the No. 14 Crimson Tide's clash against No. 4 Tennessee. The winner will take sole possession of first place in the SEC.
Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats has turned Coleman Coliseum into a formidable environment for road teams to play in. Alabama is on a 16-game home winning streak in SEC play and is 13-1 in front of its home fans this season.
Oats later joined the program to talk about Alabama's campaign so far and being on the cusp of another SEC regular season title.
Here's everything Oats said on College GameDay.
On the SEC schedule gauntlet
"I think it's the hardest one to win. It's 18 games you got to do it night after night after night. You get to the middle of February and guys are tired. You got to motivate yourself to go on the road. We were down significant just last game at Ole Miss. They got it figured out how to get a win. We're down I think 16 at Georgia you know those are the games if you don't win those not have a chance to win the league championship. Winning six games is obviously the ultimate thing in March but winning the league championship over 18 or 20 or whatever your league plays. It's hard to do. I think it's the hardest thing to do."
On Mark Sears' improvement
"He was our second-leading scorer last year, Brandon Miller was a pretty good player as you know in Charlotte. To be second leading scorer was pretty significant last year, but I think he made a big jump. He's more comfortable in the offense. He understands what shots we're looking for. A lot of the guys transfer in here and they're used to playing a different system and don't understand where they're gonna get really efficient shots. He knows where, he knows how to get them knows how to play with the ball without the ball. You watch those guys in the NBA that are efficient scores, they're really good off the ball. Getting Aaron (Estrada) in the year this year really enabled (Sears) to play a little bit more without the ball and be even more efficient."
On players having the green light from 3-point range, Davin Cosby's big game against Ole Miss
"Almost everybody (has the green light)...I didn't necessarily have any college I wished I had it. So I tell these guys 'man if I had the green light like you did, I fired up a lot more shots...'"
"(Cosby) was on the scout team the day before practice, he was 11-for-22. He got 22 up in practice. Davin's kept his confidence up all the time. But I think it's big to pump the guy's full of confidence. As long as they're good shots we're not passing up open threes. I get more mad when they pass up an open 3 than anything. It ends up in a turnover later in a possession most of the time. We're looking for open layups open threes, get to the free throw line. That's what we're looking for."
On blue-collar points
"We got blue collar points that we tally up through the game — deflections, floor-dives charges, rebounds, rebound tips, all kinds of stuff. Stuff that's not necessarily measured and total boxscore that's kind of dirty, grimy, blue collar stuff on the construction site. We try to do that. We've been top three in the country in defense two of the last three years, not this year, we're still working on getting our defense going this year. But we do emphasize playing hard for sure."
