The way Nate Oats saw it, Wildcats defenders were like sitting ducks — or as he referred to them, seals.
No. 4 Alabama basketball needed to find a way to keep up with No. 8 Kentucky on Saturday and did so by finding a chink in the Wildcats armor. Oftentimes that came off of inbounds, as the Tide would dish the ball out to either Mo Dioubate or Grant Nelson and use the forwards’ athleticism to blow by Kentucky’s forwards on the way to the hoop.
Nelson ended up with 25 points, Dioubate wound up with 8, and the Wildcats were whistled with a slew of fouls. Meanwhile, Alabama escaped Lexington, Kentucky with a 102-97 win.
Dioubate and Nelson were key in picking apart Kentucky’s defense, but Alabama’s ability to hunt for mismatches required a team effort. It’s a concept Oats says he picked up from Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazulla, who uses the analogy of his team being a pack of killer whales attacking seals.
“The out-of-bounds play we kept scoring on, kind of going at some of their seals, if you will,” Oats explained after the game. “It was just invented on the fly, and we now need to give it a name. But we just kinda kept giving it to our four-man. It kinda helped that Grant was going and Dioubate was going downhill. Give it to them on the elbow, whichever elbow matches their strong hand, put the seal on the edge and kind of going at him.
“We were able to generate some fouls using Dioubate’s skill and kind of going downhill on that. I thought we did a good job recognizing mismatches — seals, if you will — kind of going at them. They’re trying to get their matchups, and we’re just moving the guys around to where we need to get.”
Oats said he picked up Mazzulla’s killer whale approach during recent visits to Boston. While the mindset helped the Tide secure a top-10 win Saturday, it goes beyond just breaking down your opponent on the court. Just take a look at how Mazzulla describes killer whales and their place in his team’s game plan.
“I think that they are the epitome of the apex predator, right? But, at the same time, they have the humility to make sure they hunt in packs,” Mazzula said last fall, via NBC Sports Boston. “So that kind of goes to, when you’re trying to build a team, it’s like, ‘I know I’m the best, but I need people around me in order to be even better.’
“So when you see nature live that out — I know I could go kill that seal on my own, but I need the pod to come with me so we could do it tactically. And the tactical approach towards taking down their adversaries is a rather detailed one…
“So what are you willing to do to go after success and making sure you don’t skip steps in that process? The animal kingdom is about as natural as you can get it when it comes to hierarchy and when it comes to decisions you make, either bringing you closer to keeping your life or decisions bringing you closer to dying. And you’ve got to make the right decisions more times than not.”
Alabama’s win at Kentucky keeps the Tide near the top of the SEC food chain. Alabama (15-3, 4-1) remained just a game out of first place in the conference standings and was able to bounce back from a lackluster home loss to No. 21 Ole Miss earlier in the week. If the Tide wants to maintain in the hunt for a conference title, it will need to continue to pick off its remaining SEC seals as a pack.
“I think that loss against Ole Miss got us focused,” Oats said. “This was a completely different team than the one that played Ole Miss. If we learned the lessons that we needed to in that loss Tuesday and we don’t forget them for the remainder of the year, it might be the best thing to happen to us.
“We’ve just got to make sure this is not a one-game deal. We’ve got to continue to do the things that we’ve done since Tuesday night.”
Alabama will look to build off its momentum on Tuesday when it hosts Vanderbilt at 6 p.m. CT inside Coleman Coliseum. The game will be televised on SEC Network.
