STARKVILLE, Miss – Alabama coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters after the Crimson Tide’s 88-84 win over No. 14 Mississippi State on Wednesday. Alabama improved to 7-1 in conference play and achieved its third win over a top-15 side on the road.

Here’s everything Oats said after the game.

“Wow. That was quite the game. If you like big shot-making, that was the game to be at and watch. I mean, Hubbard’s pretty good. We didn’t do a very good job on him, but man, he made some tough shots. I thought Chris stepped up and said, ‘Let me take him.’ I thought maybe he did the best job out of anybody, but it was late in the game and we had already given up a bunch of them to him. I mean, he goes for 38. We gotta do a better job on defense, obviously, but we definitely made some big plays elsewhere to make up for the fact we didn’t do a very good job on Hubbard.

“And we didn’t shoot well at the free-throw line. We only go 55 percent at the line. We end up out-rebounding them, and they’re a tough team. I mean, they’ve got some of the tougher guys in the league, in my opinion. But Matthews gets four O boards, but Dioubate ends up with seven. That one at the free-throw line there late was huge. The block by Cliff there that kind of saved the game, in my opinion, I think we were up one at the time that would have put them up one with, I don’t know how much time was left, under a minute, close to 30 seconds maybe. We screwed up the defense on that, screwed up the switch, let him open, Cliff came back, made a big block. So a lot of guys, you go down the list, a lot of big plays.

“I thought Sears had a really good bounce-back game. I mean, he played hard. We chart up those blue-collar points. Dioubate ended up winning it with seven O boards, but Sears was like right there a point behind him. So man, I thought he made a bunch of tough plays. He ends up with six rebounds, three O boards. We got him on the O boards. He’s 17, nine and six. I thought he was really good overall game.

“And you look at the way we shot it from three, we try to recruit shooting because we shoot a lot of threes. But to go 15-of-31 in a road game was huge. Chris stepped up, made some big ones, a lot of big ones late in the game, too. He goes 7-of-10. Sears goes 3-of-5. Holloway is 3-of-7. Those are three main shooters, and they stepped up, made 13 threes between the three of those guys. So a lot of good plays from everybody. Huge road win against a really good team that’s obviously already won a lot of games this year. They’re going to want a lot more games this year. So that win’s going to go a long ways for us.”

“It would have been nice to have them together. We’d be shooting the ball a lot better than three as a team if we had them both this year. That was the original plan. Now that Latrell went out and Chris is finally getting back to where he’s feeling comfortable and his ankle is feeling close to 100 percent, yeah, we’d like for him to shoot it. Trelly shot it really well last year and in the games he played this year. So Chris is getting more comfortable shooting it well.

“We need guys to kind of complement Mark. Mark can make plays, get guys open, get guys to knock down shots. And hopefully, this is Chris’ coming out party here because he looked pretty good on both ends of the floor. I’m looking right now, he had pretty high defensive leverage, too. I mean, I would say he was second in defensive leverage behind Cliff. Cliff had our best, and then Youngblood was next with 42 points better on defense with Chris in the game. So I think both sides of the ball, he’s starting to kind of exert his will, his demeanor, his competitiveness, and it’s good to see.”

“Obviously, the turnovers, he tried to put it in there in some tight places too much. I think two of those were jump balls that they had the possession on. So obviously, we don’t want him turning the ball over seven times, but I thought his effort, which is really what we’ve been trying to get him to really, was great. I mean, three O boards. I don’t know if that’s a high for him. I thought six rebounds total to go 17, nine and six, if he could have got a few more rebounds and another assist, he’s pushing triple-double, which is not easy to do for a guy his size.

“So I thought he made some big shots late in the shot clock, kind of bailed us out. The one lean-in three at the top of the key, the one over there on the left baseline, I mean, we needed every last point we could get tonight, and some of the shots he hit when probably nobody else on the team would be able to generate a bucket that late in the clock like he was able to do was big. So I was super happy with Mark’s effort and performance tonight.”

“He’s a winner. He ended up being second on the team in +/- but led us in blue-collar. The timely offensive rebounds, that one at the free-throw line was huge, but he had other ones other than that. I mean, I think the one Cliff missed the dunk attempt on kind of that roll, he went in and picked that thing up. He’s just the winner. He finds his way on the floor, and he makes us play him. He was kind of dealing with a little bit of an ankle injury tonight, and he still was able to do what he did for us.”

“We weren’t really trying to do anything special. I mean, we tried to do a good job. They turned us over 14 times. Their defense is good. They kind of forced turnovers or trying to get spacing right. We didn’t do that like we needed to all the time, but the biggest thing, the ball was moving. I thought guys hit shots. When Youngblood’s open, he didn’t pass up many open looks. We need our shooters. I thought Holloway passed some open ones up. I told him he can’t pass – him, Sears, Youngblood can never pass up an open shot, ever. So Youngblood didn’t. I didn’t think Sears did either. He didn’t get very many open ones with the way they were guarding them. But guys being confident, stepping up, making big shots was big for us.”

“Good. That’s the issue. When you miss four games, it’s not four games. It’s all the practices, it’s all skill work. You could tell he was a little off, but I thought his effort was good, and he helped us win the game. I mean, when he came in, he got four rebounds. I thought that was big. He’ll get back more comfortable. I think he’ll be a lot better Saturday than he was today, but it was a good first game back. He played 12 minutes in a big road win. That’s huge.”

“Frustrating. The first one was long. Sears was trying to get it, but he was playing hard, and it was like a jailbreak. Open one up and you’re scrambling, and then you got the wrong guys closing, matchups are off and they just keep getting them. That’s frustrating. It’s similar to the play that we had when Sears eventually hit the three on the third try. But luckily for us, I don’t think they had a three. What’d they end up getting a foul on that play? Is that what happened? It didn’t end well, but lucky for us, they didn’t three on the, was it the fourth shot that got them that possession? That wasn’t one of our better possessions on defense.”