How Nate Oats feels about where Alabama basketball is heading into SEC play

BIRMINGHAM — Alabama basketball closed out its nonconference schedule with a win over 101-56 Liberty on Saturday at the BJCC in the C.M. Newton Classic.

The win marks the end of a tough nonconference slate for the Crimson Tide (8-5), one where it faced a gauntlet of a stretch of three games vs. top-10 ranked teams and subsequently dropped all three, losing to No. 4 Purdue (92-86), No. 8 Creighton (85-82) and No. 4 Arizona (87-74). Alabama's other two losses come from Ohio State (91-82) and Clemson (85-77).

Now, the Crimson Tide prepare to for SEC play, which it starts next week when Alabama travels to Nashville to take on Vanderbilt on Jan. 6. Alabama will open SEC play at home on Jan. 9 when South Carolina comes to town.

Heading into conference play, Alabama coach Nate Oats said he feels his team has plenty of work to do, primarily on the defensive side of the ball.

"Defensively, we are not where we need to be yet," Oats said. "We still had way too many mistakes today. Offensively, we are there. Obviously, it helps when you make shots, but we have to continue to work on the defensive side. I told the guys we got a week to prepare for Vanderbilt. Coach (Jerry) Stackhouse is one of the better coaches in the league. He's going to have a lot of stuff drawn up. Our mistakes on defense are going to be exposed by him."

While Alabama's offense has been dominant thus far this season, its defense has seen its fair share of struggles. Alabama is averaging 92.2 points per game, which ranks third in the NCAA, and it ranks No. 1 in the KenPom rankings. Its defense, on the other hand, is allowing 77.5 points per game and is allowing teams to shoot 43.8% from the field.

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That defense, coach Nate Oats said, is a work in progress, and something Alabama needs to improve upon as it prepares for SEC play. Oats was pretty clear with how he felt about the Alabama defense — that if it cannot improve, Alabama is going to struggle in the win column.

"Right now, our identity is an offensive team, and we have got to change that a little bit to be where we play both sides of the ball," Oats said. "We have the No. 1 offense in the country, but we are not going to win if we don't get our defense significantly better."

Alabama's defensive performance vs. the Flames was better than other outings this season, and Oats seemed fairly pleased with the Crimson Tide's defensive effort. It held Liberty, which came into the game shooting 48.9% from the field and 37.9% from deep, to just 33.3% (21 of 63) from the field and 28.6% (10 of 35) from deep.

"We made a big point of emphasis on our defensive side," Oats said. "We went to switching all ball screens, and I thought it gave us a little bit of problems. Overall, I thought it was pretty good, we kept them out of a lot of what they do well. They did make 10 threes and shot 35% which is way too many. We dodged some bullets on them, but I thought out energy was good.

"Its a good win going into the new year, and a good win going into SEC play."

Anna Snyder covers high school sports and University of Alabama recruiting for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at asnyder@gannett.com. Follow her on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, @annaesnyder2

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama basketball: How Nate Oats feels about the Tide heading into SEC play