Nate Oats Emphasizing Rebounding in Round of 32

Cleveland, Ohio. - Alabama head coach Nate Oats said on Friday, after the Crimson Tide's 90-81 victory over Robert Morris, that he was circling every player who did not collect an offensive rebound in the slim victory in the round of 64.

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Only three players collected offensive boards for Alabama on Friday - Chris Youngblood, Grant Nelson (who only played seven minutes), and Aiden Sherrell.

Nate Oats opened his Friday press conference discussing offensive boards and what makes Saint Mary's so good in that department.

"This is going to be one of the tougher teams we've played. They've got the No. 2 offensive rebounding rate in the country behind Texas A&M. We've played A&M. They do it differently," Oats said. " It's like if they get in trouble with scoring it, they just go with two bigs. They go 6'11", 7'1", and just kind of mash you on the O-board. We did not rebound it very well at all against Robert Morris. It's a little concerning."

"We have rebounded it well against some of the better offensive rebounding teams in the country like Texas A&M and Houston," Oats continued. "But there's been times we haven't rebounded it well at all."

Oats also mentioned how it will be difficult to speed up a team like Saint Mary's, which averages 61.6 possessions per game compared to Alabama's 75 possessions.

"It's hard to speed up Marciulionis. He operates at his own pace. He's good. He's skilled. Everybody acts like it's going to be a battle of tempos," Oats said. "Outside of gambling, and I'm not sure that I want to start pressing gambling, that's not really our style on defense, you may not be able to speed these guys up on their offensive end, but what you can do is eliminate two shots, three shots. And then all of a sudden, you have a 25 to 30-second possession turn into a 45 to 50-second possession, turn into over a minute possession. That's when you're going to have some problems."

Alabama has the 34th-ranked defense in the country according to Kenpom. The Crimson Tide will have to sharpen up defensively if they hope to advance to the second weekend for the fourth time under Oats.

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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_.