Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats is beaming over the talented roster the UA coaching staff has assembled for his sixth season with the Crimson Tide, and he’s aware expectations are high after Alabama’s first Final Four appearance last spring. ESPN ranks his team No. 2 in the nation with the 2024-25 season approaching in less than a month. Oats spoke with The Tuscaloosa News for a Q&A about both returning and newcomer talent, the demands that come with that and a new assistant coach.
Question: What has freshman Labaron Philon shown in preseason practices?
Oats: I love Labaron. I think he’s super competitive. He plays both sides of the ball; obviously he’s a super-talented scorer, which we knew coming in, but his basketball IQ is high, and he can really defend, which I didn’t know. I knew he had the athleticism (to defend), but I didn’t know if he had the will, the mental fortitude, the competitive nature to be a great defender, but he does. He’s going to force us to play him minutes this year, which is great. It gives us more depth in the backcourt. I love him. I think he’s got a legitimate shot to play on the next level because he plays so hard on both sides of the ball.
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Question: How much impact can transfer Cliff Omoruyi make for an interior defense that struggled last season?
Oats: The best thing he does is protect the rim in defense, and he’s doing that really well. We’re teaching him our style of basketball on the offensive end, and he’s getting much better at that as well. We’re getting him used to playing at a faster pace. He’s definitely is not used to playing at our pace, but we’re getting him there. The one thing I felt like we were missing badly last year was rim protection, and he’s arguably one of the best rim protectors in the country, maybe the best rim protector in the country. So our biggest deficiency (from last year), he’s going to help solve a lot of that. (Offensively) he’s a big-time lob target on pick-and-rolls, but we’ve been playing through the elbows with him too. He’s a better passer than you’d think. He’s better now than he was when he got here in June.
Question: How much has Jarin Stevenson improved in the offseason?
Oats: Everybody forgets, he’s supposed to be a freshman this year. This is supposed to be his first year in college. So he got a year head start. If you think of it like that, he’s very far along to be the same age as our freshmen. He’s looking really good. (He’s improving) with aggressiveness overall. Being aggressive attacking the rim on offense, being aggressive on rebounds, playing more physical on the defensive end. He just needed to get more confident, more physical, more aggressive, and he’s doing all that.
Question: How does new assistant coach Brian Adams approach needed improvement on defense?
Oats: He’s been very good for us. He’s got the fiery personality that we need. He’s super detailed on the defensive side of the ball, and he’s going to do a great job. When Charlie (Henry) was here, we were ranked top three in the country (defensively) in two of those four years. Our goal is to get back to top three in the country on the defensive side, and I think (Adams is) the guy to do it. And we’ve got the right personnel to do it as well.
Question: How do you approach preseason hype that suggests Alabama will be one of the nation’s elite teams?
Oats: Those two years we won the SEC regular season and tournament both, we were picked fifth (in the league) both those years, so we snuck up on people those years. I don’t think we’re going to sneak up on anybody this year. We’re going to have to do a really good job keeping our guys focused on the daily grind, the process of getting better. There will be plenty of mistakes we make in wins, and we can’t just be satisfied with a win. We’ve got to try to be better. People ask me if I like being the underdog with the chip on our shoulder or being favored to win like we are this year. I like having a chip on our shoulder trying to prove people wrong about us. But I’d much rather have the roster we have this year and try to figure out the mental motivation dynamics.
Question: How is Mark Sears approaching his role as a leader, and how has he performed in preseason?
Oats: The best practice he’s ever had since I’ve been here was (last week), which tells you he’s getting better daily. His leadership was great, his effort and competitiveness was great. He’s super competitive, but he’s been able to dominate the game so much on the offensive side, it shows more on the offensive side. I thought his competitive, fiery nature showed … on both sides, defense and offense, and that’s where he’s got to get. He’s showing the leadership we need him to. We’ve just got to get him to keep doing it every day. Toward the end of the year (last year), the NCAA Tournament run, for sure, he played great defense. It was just too inconsistent throughout the course of the year. But if we can get the Mark Sears from the NCAA Tournament run and the Mark Sears from (lately) in practice, and we’ve seen a lot more of it this offseason, if he can do that every game, we’re going to be just fine.
Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.
