Nate Oats after Alabama Basketball’s OT win over the South Carolina Gamecocks 78-76 | SEC Basketball

quite a game, but before we get into the game, just want to address yesterday's press conference and my response to the Brandon Miller question. I'm not here to make excuses, but I want to make it clear that I didn't have the details from the hearing that morning since I was coming straight from practice. I used the poor choice of words, making it appear like I wasn't taking this tragic situation seriously, which we have throughout the course of it. I sincerely apologize for that. I know Greg shared some information earlier today on the situation. I don't really have anything more to add other than what he's already said. Start on Zoom with Nick Kelly.

Nate, what led the decision for Brandon to play today? Well, as Greg said earlier, we make decisions based on available facts, and that's what we did here. Any questions in person? Okay. I'll move through something like Brandon has the last day or two. He's a young guy, and I might have really wrecked a little bit. He didn't resolve out there really seemed strong, no matter what. He's one of the most mentally tough kids I've ever coached. Not surprised, 41 points, don't want to say expect that, but not surprised he came right to play and play well tonight.

Charlie Potter on Zoom. Yeah, Coach. You talked about Brandon, but for the other guys, how much of a distraction maybe was all this for them and did you see that maybe affect them in their play? It's hard to say. We've been in the Vanderbilt game, came after that. It may have been. If I want to make an excuse form, we can use it, but I'm not really going to make too many excuses. We got to play better.

Some of those other guys didn't play up to their typical performance. I'm not sure. Obviously, it could have been a distraction, but Brandon showed up, played pretty well. I think it may have just been a coincidental. I don't know. Hopefully, we play a lot better Saturday. We need everybody to play a little better Saturday for us.

Austin. Yeah, Coach. I mean, just to miss everything that's gone on the last couple of days, what did it mean for you to see your team and Miller and his teammates to grid this one out on the road? It was big. It was the one we couldn't afford to drop, but South Carolina came right to play. They were making tough shots. They were shooting at three at the end of the half. It turned out to be pretty big three in an overtime game.

I mean, they did a lot of things right. We didn't play well. So I told our guys, I was proud of them. Sometimes, you shoot it poorly. We didn't make free throws at a normal clip. We didn't shoot the ball from three at a decent clip. I think, upside the brain and everybody else was one for 14.

We didn't do a lot of things well and still figured out a way to beat a pretty talented team. And they played well tonight. So on the road, it's not easy to do. So give our guys a lot of credit. We all rebounded and played 13 and we made some tough plays and got some tough stops on the stretch. So proud of our guys at Niagara Guard for sure. Two more.

Paulie. Brandon, certainly, you had Mike at the night, but then sitting there and saying, what's going on? What was different in the name of the sport? What was the name of the game? When did you recognize that you had that in San Diego? I mean, kind of go back to the Vandy game, which is a comparison to this one a little bit. I thought he came ready to play then. When out of the gate, there's been many games. He hasn't been locked in the hospital, but basketball kind of becomes a safe haven for some of these guys. They get on the floor, they can kind of lock into what they've done their whole lives and put some of the outside stuff that's out of their mind. So I thought Brandon did a great job really getting himself mentally prepared to play.

And Junior was really aggressive tonight. We needed to be aggressive. A lot of our other guys didn't score in the ball wall for us. We scored 78 points and only had two guys in double figures. It's not typical for this team. We usually have pretty balanced scoring outside of that. Sears has been good for us.

Jay Braley's been good. Clowney's been good. Nibari's been shooting the ball pretty well. He didn't make a shot tonight. So Brandon needed to be aggressive. He was, I thought, I thought you could tell early on he was trying to be extra aggressive. I mean, it wasn't like he was, and they did a pretty good job defending them too.

And they put all kinds of different matchups on him. I mean, at the end of the day, I'd meet you, Johnson, and they tried to go small. But Brandon did a good job attacking down here, getting to the rim on that stuff. Last one, Mike. You mentioned the Vandy game as a parallel. Just how much did that experience help you in dealing with this? And how much did it alter your preparation to the last 24 hours and perhaps your messaging as well to your team? Yeah, I mean, we referenced it a little bit. So we've been in tough situations with things that can be a distraction.

And once we focus in, I thought we played pretty well at Vandy. Let's come out and do it again. And again, maybe it's just coincidental that somebody's got struggled. I don't know. I don't want to make excuses for anybody struggling. We just we got to play better on Saturday. But we referenced it a little bit, not a whole lot.

I mean, to be honest with you, our main focus was on the scout. I mean, we tried to keep things as normal as possible. The South Carolina scout was our main focus, you know, on 95% of what we spent time with the team on. And, you know, I thought we prepared the guys well. They did a good job. We didn't make shots. It's good to have some of those nights.

You don't shoot the ball well. The opponent, they shot 43% from three and they made some tough ones. They made a half court shot. They made in the buzzer shot in the shot clock shots. I mean, they made some real tough threes with some wide open looks and missed them. So it's going to happen like that for your team to still figure out how to get a win. I think it shows a ton of character about you guys.

I was proud of how they performed. Thanks, guys. All right. Thanks, my Staffing people as well.

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