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While the recent struggles are no doubt concerning to Oats and his staff, there is still a long SEC schedule ahead of them filled with opportunities to overcome its shortcomings. Oats said that the first thing his team needs to focus on is developing leadership.
"We gotta get some leadership," Oats said. "We gotta get some guys that play with max effort 100-percent of the time, not a percentage of the time that they decide they’re gonna play hard. The Missouri game was case in point. They shot it really well against us, but in my opinion they shot it really well because we didn’t put enough pressure on them. We didn’t play hard enough. I mean, we saw the next night out Arkansas got their back against a wall, 0-3 in the league, they played really hard and they shouldn’t be 0-3 in the league and Missouri struggled and couldn’t score the ball against them. Well, if we had played that hard, they probably would have struggled like that against us, too. We gotta give better effort for 40 minutes, we gotta give better effort every possession in practice.
"We gotta get some leadership," Oats said. "We gotta get some guys that play with max effort 100-percent of the time, not a percentage of the time that they decide they’re gonna play hard. The Missouri game was case in point. They shot it really well against us, but in my opinion they shot it really well because we didn’t put enough pressure on them. We didn’t play hard enough. I mean, we saw the next night out Arkansas got their back against a wall, 0-3 in the league, they played really hard and they shouldn’t be 0-3 in the league and Missouri struggled and couldn’t score the ball against them. Well, if we had played that hard, they probably would have struggled like that against us, too. We gotta give better effort for 40 minutes, we gotta give better effort every possession in practice.
Amidst Midseason Slump, Alabama Basketball Seeks Consistency in Effort
The Crimson Tide has lost three of its last five games, with back-to-back comeback efforts falling short at Missouri and against Auburn.
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