Oats Bemoans Bluegrass Beatdown

If you thought at Tennessee and at Auburn were bad, welcome to Alabama at Kentucky. It was brutal as the 17th-ranked Cats took down No.13 Bama 117-95.

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Sadly for him, Alabama coach Nate Oats had to discuss the beatdown postgame with the media. Here is a snapshot of what he said:

"There's not a lot of positives about this. The only positive thing is we played well enough on offense through the course of the year to be tied for first place after that horrendous effort. We got four games left, and we got to try to figure out how to get these guys a little more motivated to play harder on defense.

"The good thing is, we're tied for first place in the league, believe it or not. If anybody watched us today, they wouldn't believe it. But we are. And we're still right there. We have four games to go, tied for first place. We've got to try to win all four.

“We’ve got to have to have some guys make decisions as to whether we want to be a novelty offensive team, and whether we actually want to be able to win championships.

"We've had question marks about our defense all year. Those question marks are completely erased. Everybody knows that we don't really guard at this point.

"If the defense isn't fixable, we're not going to be able to win any big games.  Maybe we can hold somebody to a 1.1 [points per possession] or a 1.2, rather than a 1.46 [which was Kentucky's average Saturday]."

“Do you want to try to win a championship or not? There’s no point going crazy on them. They’re adults. They see the 117 on the scoreboard just like the rest of the country sees it. We’ll see how much pride they have."

That process begins in practice Monday and continues into Wednesday night's game at Ole Miss which tips at 8 p.m. CT and be heard on 95.3 The Bear.