No. 5 Alabama took its recent dominance on the road Wednesday night, blowing out South Carolina, 88-68. The Crimson Tide (13-2, 2-0) has now won seven straight games, including victories of 20 or more points in three of its last four outings.

Following the win over South Carolina, head coach Nate Oats spoke to reporters inside Colonial Life Arena. Here’s a full transcript of his post-game press conference.

“Good first road game for us in the SEC. I thought our guys answered the bell pretty well. We came out of the gate good early. Mark was really good early. I think he scored or assisted on 17 of our first 25. He looked like a Player of the Year candidate to start the game. And I thought they did a pretty good job taking him out of it a lot, especially early in the second half.

“I thought our defense was significantly better for the whole 40 than it had been. I didn’t like the start of the second half. We had been having bad starts, especially when we had leads. So we made a little bit of a change. I thought the intensity picked up and we were able to kind of keep the lead. I’m not sure how close they got there in the second half, but I thought we did a pretty good job keeping them at bay for the most part.

“I thought Mo Dioutbate’s defense on a Murray-Boyles was one of the big, big keys in the game, to be honest with you. A lot of people have him in the first round of the draft. He shot 1-for-6 tonight, only had six points, and I thought Dioubate did a great job guarding him. Mo’s plus-19 in his 17 minutes when he was in. He really impacts the game in a big way. I was happy with his effort.

“We got a lot of good efforts from a lot of people. So good road win for us. I know they were down Stute, which obviously helped us. But things happen, and we’ve gotta take advantage of that stuff sometimes.”

Oats on more about Mo Dioubate’s play on the defensive end…

“He’s a tough kid. I wasn’t happy with the flagrant foul (vs. Oklahoma). It just wasn’t a smarter play. It was a turnover, so it was supposed to be our ball. They get two free throws and the ball. So he lost some minutes in that game, quite a few minutes actually, but he had had a great practice coming in. and then we got his head right again and got ready to go tonight. I thought he was a really good matchup for Murray-Boyles.

“He’s super strong. … He’s long. He moves well. He’s tough. So he’s been having great weeks of practice, and we’re trying to get him more minutes. And he had a great matchup tonight. He’s a guy that, if we’re ever not playing tough enough, he’s going to bring toughness. That’s what he does, and he brought it tonight, particularly on the defense end guarding their leading scorer.”

“That had definitely been building. We’ve had awful starts to the second half, particularly when we’ve had a lead. It’s like they get comfortable or just kind of play around with it. That’s not how we do things around here. We’re playing every possession no matter what the score is. We’re trying to get stops. I mean, I think they started on a 9-6 run. Giving up layups in transition.

"We just didn’t look like we were ready to start the second half, and I’ve seen that too often and I had enough of it. So we subbed, and then that wasn’t quite good enough. The next group gave up a transition bucket, and then we called the time out and I got it straightened out after that.”

“We spread people out. We only ended up with 19 threes, which isn’t as many as we’d like. We’ve shot 55 in a game this year. We’re still where we’re at in the country in 3-pointers per game. We’re somewhere up in the top five, I believe. So people are cognizant of the fact we like to shoot. You can spread them out a little bit. Particularly, they lock onto Sears like they did tonight. It opens up big driving gaps. We’ve got strong, tough, physical drivers – Dioubate, Jarin Stevenson. Derrion Reid drove it to the rim well today, Grant Nelson. You kind of go through that list. Kind of get downhill, so the guys are getting downhill, kind of open the lanes.

“We do a kind of analytics box score. We had us at 21-33 at the rim. So we also settle for a whole lot of non-rim twos. Holloway is pretty skilled. He took a few – I was good with all of them but the last one. But we’re trying to get downhill, get to the rim and get the free-throw line. It would have been better if we would have made some free throws tonight. That was a disaster for us. But everything else was pretty – it was definitely not one of our better offensive games, but it was good enough to win tonight. But that is definitely one of the things we like to do is get the ball downhill to the rim. I don’t know how many dunks we had tonight – six. Go to the rim with some force.”

“I’m not gonna address calls. That’s not anything that’s smart to do. So I don’t know what it was. I did think we were driving into the rim. I don’t know. Sears is usually pretty good at getting to the line. I mean, he shot 13 last game. He only shot five this game. Some of our guys, maybe the fact we were missing them, they got a little less aggressive. They didn’t want to go. But I did think we got downhill.

"Some of these guys are hard to officiate. I don’t know. I don’t have a great answer until I go back and watch that over again. Or I didn’t think the officiating was that bad. I always argue a call here or there on something, but yeah, I’d have to look at the tape and see why I didn’t think we got to the line as much as we probably should have.”

“Coach [Brian] Adam has done a great job. I think he’s really good. He’s been in the NBA for pretty much most of his career, and obviously, at that level, you’ve gotta game plan for the best players in world. So I think he does a good job. I think it also speaks to we’ve got some guys that have some personal pride in their defense this year. Last game, Labaron Philon, I thought, did a really good job on Fears. Jarin Stevenson is 6-10 and can move his feet, athletic. The job he did on RJ Davis, the reps he had on Fears. And then when they got big, I think Cliff [Omoruyi's] done well. I mean, Cliff had to figure out our system, but he’s done alright.

“And then when they get a kind of an undersized post-up guy like Murray-Boyles is – and he’s really good. He’s obviously played really well in this league for the last couple of years. Mo Diobuate’s got a lot of pride in his defense, too. So I think we’ve got different guys, whether it’s Labaron, Mo Derrion Reid’s taking a lot of pride in stopping guys. We didn’t do a great job on Ace Bailey, but when Derrion came in, he did a pretty good job on him. So we’ve played some of the best players in the country this year. We’ve had different guys step up, want the assignment, which is good to have as a coach, and then step up and actually do the assignment pretty well.”