Nate Oats Calling Out Offensive Rebounding

Cleveland, Ohio. - Alabama clawed its way to a lead in the Tide's first NCAA Tournament matchup with Robert Morris, then held on for dear life while Robert Morris orchestrated a brief comeback, taking a one-point lead in the second half before giving it back up to Alabama.

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After that point, the Crimson Tide never looked back in the opening-round victory over the Colonials.

Despite the victory, Alabama head coach Nate Oats was severely unhappy with his team in the postgame press conference regarding offensive rebounding in the win over Robert Morris.

"We've got to be better. I'm going through circling everybody on the front court that had zero O-boards and I've got four guys that play the 4 and 5 for the most part that came up with a zero tonight," Oats said. "That's not good enough. We've got to do better."

Alabama had seven players out of 10 possible not collect an offensive rebound in the win over Robert Morris. The only players who did were Chris Youngblood, Grant Nelson, and AIden Sherrell. Youngblood was the only player to have more than one offensive rebound.

Robert Morris outrebounded Alabama for the entire game 39-37. The tallest player on Robert Morris's roster is 6-foot-8, while Alabama has four players listed at 6-foot-10 or taller.

"Then on the other end, shoot, we've got to box out. We've got to go hit somebody when a shot goes up and go get it," Oats said on his team's defensive rebounding tonight. " That's the stuff we've been stressing, and we're more than capable of, when we've played some of the best rebounding teams in the country, Houston, Texas A&M, Mississippi State has been traditionally great on the glass, we've out-rebounded them. We keep saying it when we know we need to do it, we do it at a high level. We tried to stress we needed to do it tonight and we got out-rebounded by Robert Morris. These guys got to step up every game because if we continue to let this happen, we won't be playing for too much longer.

Alabama center Clifford Omoruyi, who was one of the seven with no offensive rebounds, said he takes it personally that Robert Morris outperformed Alabama on the boards.

"I take that personally," Omoruyi said. "Next game, I'm gonna do better. Next game, we just got to do better rebounding."

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Wyatt Fulton is the Tide 100.9 DME and Brand Manager, primarily covering Alabama Crimson Tide football and men's basketball. For more Crimson Tide coverage, follow Wyatt on X (Formerly known as Twitter) at @FultonW_.