Alabama Basketball 'Running out of Time' to Fix Defensive Issues

Alabama basketball's two conference losses were both road blowouts, can the Crimson Tide fix its defensive issues with four more road games remaining?

The No. 16 Alabama Crimson Tide basketball team has eight games remaining until the annual SEC Tournament in Nashville. At 8-2 through the first ten games of conference action the Crimson Tide finds itself in a virtual four-way tie for first place with rivals Tennessee, Auburn and the South Carolina Gamecocks.

Alabama is coming off an 18-point loss to the No. 12 Auburn Tigers on Wednesday and looks to bounce back with the LSU Tigers next on the schedule. The last time the Tide came off a loss, a 20-point loss to the Volunteers in Knoxville, Alabama rebounded with its first top-10 win of the season over the the Auburn Tigers.

With five weeks left until postseason play the Alabama players have to find a sense of urgency on the defensive end in order to compete for the conference title and have tournament success. 

"They're getting a little bit more vocal as it gets closer to the end and they see the end nearing and we're running out of time to fix this. I'm trying to get them to talk more, me ask more questions instead of make statements, get their opinion, what's wrong here? What do we have to do to fix it? Why?," said Alabama head coach Nate Oats on Friday. "We had some guys - after the game - we had a decent amount of guys speak up in the locker room at Auburn. The next day in film we had a decent amount of guys speak up. Typically the day after we don't go live, we chose to go live last night in practice. We kind of had a split day where we went in the morning. We went live at night and we went live again this morning, I thought they were both pretty good."

Alabama has four more road games remaining and has one more home-and-home series to kick off with the Florida Gators. The Crimson Tide looks to sweep its second season series of the year this Saturday as they head to Baton Rouge. What will be the key to beating a team twice?

"With the LSU game we played pretty well in the second half, but it was a close game for a large part of the game," said Oats. "So we've got to remind our guys, this is a team that's 3-1 at home. They are going to play better at home. Mike Williams has been scorching hot from 3. Their team's averaging 10 made 3's a game over the last six games. They're playing better. This will be the third time we've played a team twice so the question is, 'who makes the biggest jump improvement from game one to game two?' In the Mississippi State case, we did. In the Auburn case, they did. We're kind of one and one on that regard as to who's making a bigger improvement from game one to game two."

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