TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters after the Crimson Tide’s 74-64 loss to Ole Miss on Saturday. Alabama (14-3, 3-1 SEC) dropped its first conference game of the season Tuesday night.

Here’s everything Oats said.

“Obviously, not one of our better showings. You gotta give Ole Miss a ton of credit. They came ready on the road. We did not come ready. I gotta figure out how to do a better job making sure our guys are ready to go. Our first 10 possessions, we had seven turnovers. We’ve been having some issues with turnovers throughout the year. This defense turns people over, and we didn’t have our guys ready to go and not it turn over.

“And then maybe the most disappointing thing on the night, in my opinion, was our lack of effort on the offensive glass. I don’t know if our didn’t realize that’s what’s been keeping our offense going. We haven’t been shooting it particularly well. We’ve had too many turnovers. Our offense hasn’t been great this year, but the offensive rebounding rate’s been really saving us in some of these games. And I believe the one offensive rebound in the first half on the box score, I believe, was given to Jarin and on the missed dunk. I think they gave a miss field goal/offensive rebound/turnover. So I think essentially we had zero offensive rebounds in the first half, and then we ended the game with with three if you take the one off. You shouldn’t reward a missed dunk with an offensive rebound for hanging on the rim.

“So to go from 23 against A&M, who’s one of the toughest teams in the country – and Ole Miss is tough, too. Nothing to take away from. But you can’t go from 23 to three and expect to win the game. Ole Miss’ defense is very good. Coach Beard always had great defensive teams. Coach Adams is over there helping them. He’s always had great defensive teams. They’re switching definitely messed with us. As a staff, I thought we had our guys ready to go. We obviously did not. We’ve got to do a way better job. A&M’s got a similar defense, but they don’t switch one through five, on and off the ball like Ole Miss did as much. And for a few times that we were able to make then pay the rest of the game, we just got super stagnant. We only had 11 assists to 21 turnovers, and we just weren’t ready to go.

“And you know what? Defensively, we definitely had some mistakes, and we should have been better. But we lost this game on the offensive end. We lost the game with our turnovers, our lack of effort on the offensive glass. Guys that we count on to go get offensive rebounds came through with nothing for us tonight, and we got to do a better job making sure our guys mentally are ready to go and understand how tough these games are every single night out in the SEC.”

“We did. It might have been a season-low. It’s a little disappointing on what they termed ‘Blue Collar Night,’ we had 72.5 to their 89.5. So they almost had 20 more than we did. So again, I told our guys in the locker room after the game, we have to deserve to win, and we didn’t deserve to win this game. Ole Miss came in and they deserved to win the game. You have to deserve it with your preparation going in the game. Then you gotta deserve with your effort once you’re in the game. The team that deserved to win tonight won the game tonight.”

“It would have definitely helped. But I told our guys, we missed seven of them. That didn’t lose us the game. But I’ve been telling them if we don’t fix it, it is going to lose this game. If this would have been a one- or two-possession game, maybe you point to that as costing us the game. Obviously, if he would have stepped to line in a few of those situations and made them, it would have maybe helped us get on a run.

“It’s mental with some of them, for sure. But here’s my thing with them — free throws are the one thing in the game of basketball that has no variables other than the variables you put in your own head. And if you want to have confidence, you got to earn confidence. You can’t talk yourself into being confident. You earn confidence by putting up hundreds, and if you need to thousands. And shooting a free throw doesn’t put wear and tear on your body. Even on an off day when you’re supposed to be recovering, you come in and shoot hundreds of free throws.

“So we’ve been on the guys. We’re starting to chart it a lot more. It’s something that’s beyond frustrating for me. Grant shot a lot of them the last couple days, but I’m not sure how many leading up to, it starting to be an issue over the last week or two – a real issue. Free throws are a deal that you got to spend time every day working on, and we obviously gotta spend some time on it because we got too many guys stepping up, not making their free throws when they need to step up there and make them for us.”

“We’re trying to keep the ball out of the point guard’s hands, and I think it’s better. Personally. I think you turn people over better that way. I think putting them on the in-bounder, you can go trap right away. But I felt like they were trying to get it to their best free throw shooter right away, which twice, they got it to their poorest free throw shooter, and we weren’t close enough to foul them. Again, though, that’s like an effort thing. When the guy on him is supposed to be denying him the ball and somehow he’s so far off him that he can catch it and throw it back to the in-bounder without getting fouled. We just weren’t playing hard enough.

“But that was the thought in the press, putting them off the ball to try to get a steal on the in-bounds pass, keep it out of the point guard’s hands, force somebody else, which we did. And then we just weren’t playing hard enough to foul the guy that we wanted to foul as soon as he caught it.”

“I think we should all be pretty concerned, to be honest with you. We’re not aggressive, other than on the rebounds. The guards didn’t come off attacking a switch like we tried to coach them to do. We’re not shooting the ball very well. But part of that is we’re not getting very good shots. I mean, we only shot 20 threes. Now, part of that was their switching because they’d switch and our guys wouldn’t be ready to attack the switch, and then you’re not pulling the help in.

“I think we will figure it out. I think Coach Pannone, Coach Bauman and myself spend most of the time on the offensive side, and we’ll spend a lot of time evaluating this one. But we’re going to definitely have to get back to getting to the offensive boards. That’s been saving our offense. I don’t know if the guys just felt like they didn’t need to anymore or what, but that obviously didn’t work very well for us.”

“I think some of that stuff’s an effort thing. Sometimes when guys are struggling, you play hard, you make some blue-collar plays – he didn’t have many tonight – you make some effort plays, you play aggressive, you get downhill, you get yourself going a little bit. I thought his blue-collar plays, his effort plays have been higher in the past. And I also, like I told the whole team, you got to earn the right to play well. Are you spending enough time in the gym working on your game outside of practice, or are we having to beg you to get in the gym?

“It’s like some of these guys got to get in the gym and work on their game. We’re not going to practice them for three hours a day at this point of the season. We’ve kept practices short, hour and 15. We went on an hour and 20 yesterday. We didn’t practice Sunday at all. So how much are they getting in the gym, working on their own? You got to deserve to play well. I’m not sure right now everybody on our team deserves to play well.”

“They’re proving it right now. I mean, they’ve got two tough road wins. Their style is a little bit different than most, particularly on the defensive end. They’ve got good, hard-nosed, tough players. You look at some of the guys, they’ve got seven kids on that team that scored 1,000 points or more in their career. So the way they looked tonight, I think they should be in the mix to win the whole thing, not just be a double-bye team. I think they’re gonna be in the mix to win the whole thing. I mean, at this point, four games in, we no longer have full control of our own destiny since we don’t get them again.

“Somebody else is gonna have to beat them. We’re gonna have to take care of business. They’re gonna be in the mix, I think. They’re a good team. You gotta give them a bunch of credit for the way we played tonight, too. I’m disappointed with our effort, the way we came out ready to play. You got to give them a ton of credit with the way they guard, the way they play. They were ready to go.”

“He obviously presented a lot tonight. We knew he was good. I thought some of their guards had been some other higher scores coming in. But when we switched, he seemed to be able to punish us on the switch a little bit more. He got it inside. When he did miss, he went right back up, got his own misses a lot. He was a problem for us tonight. We may have screwed up some of the matchups. He played 31 minutes. I didn’t play Cliff nearly as much. I probably should have played Cliff more, matched up with him, switched less. He was an issue tonight. We gotta do a better job preparing for bigs like that.”

“It’s hard to pick out any kind of silver lining in this, but he played heavy minutes. It seemed like his body was responding better. He didn’t shoot it particularly great, 3-of-10, but I think he’s getting more comfortable in the offense, making some tough plays. He had some screwups, too, but hopefully, he’s more comfortable.

“And I thought Holloway showed pretty well. I think he’s the one guy that shot it pretty well tonight. We didn’t score it very well at all, but he ended up in double figures, leading us in scoring with 15. I thought defensively, he was a little bit better than he’d been, too, which was evidenced by he played almost 30 minutes. He got more minutes than normal. But nobody was good enough for us to win this game, including the head coach, and we got to be better moving forward. We got a tough one on the road against Kentucky.”