Alabama’s top-ranked offense came to Rupp Arena and got blown out. Nate Oats explains why.

Alabama men’s basketball entered Rupp Arena on Saturday with the highest-scoring, most efficient offense in all of college basketball.

And the Crimson Tide got blown out anyway.

Kentucky’s 117-95 pasting of SEC-leading Alabama was the latest twist in what’s become another topsy-turvy UK basketball season.

But from an Alabama perspective, the loss, and on-court performance in general, brought back memories of the Crimson Tide’s uneven showing in nonconference play.

Defensively, Alabama (19-8 overall, 11-3 in the SEC) surrendered 1.539 points per possession to UK, marking the most efficient offensive performance by the Wildcats in more than 20 years.

Offensively, the Crimson Tide scored on 10 of their first 11 possessions, but then went on to score on only nine of their final 26 possessions of the first half. This included a stretch in the opening period in which Alabama only made one field goal in a 7:46 stretch.

Kentucky (19-8, 9-5) took the lead for good with 9:15 left in the first half, led by 16 points at the break and never looked back.

All three of Alabama’s conference losses this season have come on the road, and by large margins: By 20 at Tennessee, by 18 at Auburn and now by 22 at Kentucky.

Afterward, Alabama head coach Nate Oats spoke to media members at Rupp Arena about the heavy defeat.

Here’s everything Oats said:

Opening statement:

Kentucky was ready to play tonight, we weren’t. Cal (John Calipari) had his guys ready to go, I didn’t. They looked great, we looked awful. Our defense intensity was... I told our guys after the game that we’ve had question marks about our defense all year, those question marks are pretty erased: Everyone knows we don’t guard at this point... I thought our effort stunk and part of the issue was we turned it over and they scored 29 points off our 16 turnovers.

You can’t turn the ball over that much. Our starting backcourt had too many turnovers. We need to do a better job of... taking care of the ball.

(Lists the transition points and points off turnovers that Alabama allowed).

We gave up 45 points before even giving the halfcourt defense a chance to get a stop. And then once we got in the halfcourt I didn’t think we were great in that area either. So, Kentucky shot the ball pretty well... They were the team that was supposed to be able to shoot it. They shot it twice as good as we did.

We gave up 54% from 3. We gave up 63% from the field. Any kind of decent defense was played in the last eight minutes, when I thought the game was already over... There’s not a whole lot of positives about this, the only positive thing is we’ve played well enough on offense through the course of the year to be tied for first place after that horrendous effort. We’ve got four game left and we’ve got to try and figure out how to get these guys a little more motivated to play harder on defense.

Question about if Alabama considered changing the tempo of the game to slow down Kentucky’s offensive surge.

We knew transition defense was key to the game and we knew if we turned it over it was going to fuel their transition (offense), so I didn’t have a third point guard to put it that wasn’t going to turn it over.

It would have helped to have Latrell Wrightsell (who didn’t play), but he wasn’t going to make up 22 points. He is shooting better than the rest of our guys and taking care of the ball better than most of them, it would have helped to have him, but certainly wasn’t going to make the difference today...

I’m not sure what else I could have done to change up, (we’re) certainly not going to walk the ball up the floor. Not that that would have helped anyways, we would have turned the ball over more probably.

Most of our turnovers weren’t transition turnovers, they were just careless passes, being careless with the ball. Throwing straight to the other team in pick-and-roll. I’d have to go through all 16 of the turnovers to tell you all of them, but we knew that they were dangerous in transition and that we could turn it over. We turn it over and I felt like we had too many guys not give us an effort to get back in transition and matched up and they made us pay like we suspected they would if we didn’t do a good job.

Question about if Alabama’s defense is fixable.

There’s no perfect offense... Kentucky’s a good offensive team, they were top-10 coming into the game. I know Cal’s done a really good job kind of fixing the shooting issues he’s had in the past. He recruited some shooters. And he had some shooters and he had some other guys today: Justin Edwards goes 4-for-4 from 3) and he hadn’t been shooting it all that great.

We let (Rob) Dillingham, (Reed) Sheppard and (Antonio) Reeves all shoot over 50% too. So, he’s done a good job getting the roster fixed to where they have good shooting, they space the floor out. Obviously, they’re better on offense.

If the defense isn’t fixable, we’re not going to be able to win any big games. So, I don’t know if it’s fixable to the point where we get to where we were last year, third in the country, that’s past the point of doing that. But, maybe we can hold somebody to (lower points per possession)... I think there’s parts of it fixable, some of it, I don’t know.

Question about difficulty in containing Justin Edwards

Yeah, he’s 10-for-10 from the field, shoot he didn’t miss a shot. He’s a guy that’s big, strong and physical, and when he goes 4-of-4 from 3, and you don’t do a very good job cutting him off. I thought we gave up back cuts. We weren’t locked in on the defensive end...

When a guy like that that’s as athletic as him plays like, he goes 4-for-4 from 3, you’re in trouble.

Question about Rylan Griffen’s offensive play and growth.

He’s definitely getting better, we’re relying on him more. He’s a pretty smart kid, he usually been decent on defense for us, he’s kind of been one of the brighter spots, at least his on-ball defense.

You know, he needed to be better for us on defense, but it would be nice if he shot it a little bit better. We can rely on just shooting, and making 15 3s to win games...

You can get up as many as you want, a large part of that is how Kentucky guarded us: They wanted to run us off the line, they did a really good job. Rylan got off the most (3s) of anybody, but he was solid, shoot he didn’t have a turnover. That’s better than you can say about most of the rest of the roster tonight.

Question about the offensive firepower of a Kentucky lineup with Rob Dillingham, Antonio Reeves Reed Sheppard, Justin Edwards and Zvonimir Ivisic.

Yeah, I mean, Z (Zvonimir Ivisic) had 18 points in less than 20 minutes. We didn’t do a very good job guarding him at all. We were supposed to switch, we knew he was a shooter, we switched guards, you give up a 3, I got no idea...

Pick-and-pop is not supposed to work against a switching coverage. And we switched and somehow when he still popped he got off a 3. Our guys were not on the same page defensively. Those three guards are obviously uber-talented: Shoot it, score it... Edwards goes 10-of-10, Z goes 7-of-11, you’ve got three really good, talented guards that can all pass, dribble and shoot.

That’s a really good offensive group. And we didn’t guard and we obviously didn’t make them pay on our end.

I’m guessing that group probably doesn’t play as much together because they’re a poor defensive group. But, if they’re going to score every time down it doesn’t matter. They’re hitting 3s every other possession and scoring every time down...

We probably helped Cal out a little bit tonight, figuring some lineups out that work because, shoot... I don’t know what kind of records they set tonight on offense, but I’m guessing they set a few.

Question about how Alabama can try to better limit turnovers, especially in big games on the road.

I mean, our guards have got to take care of the ball. We were just careless... We’ve got Mark (Sears) and Aaron (Estrada) who are really good guards, but to have a lot of turnovers between your starting backcourt, that’s not a recipe for winning basketball.

So I think we’ve done a decent job... And again, Kentucky was pretty good defensively. They’ve had their defensive woes, as we have... today we were way worse than they were defensively. They were better today, but Tennessee, Auburn, they got up into us, they were physical... I’d have to go back and look at every one (of the turnovers). I remember some were just careless, some in the paint, just got caught in the air or weren’t disciplined enough with our ball security.

Just making some undisciplined plays to be honest with you.

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