Alabama basketball coach, Nate Oats has been dissatisfied since the Tide’s sloppy win at Vanderbilt. Concerns about his first Crimson Tide team deepened last Saturday despite a win over Kansas State. Against the Wildcats, the Tide had a 22-3 deficit in offensive rebounds.
Then team leader, John Petty, failed to lead in practices going into the LSU game. Oats responded by not starting Petty in Baton Rouge. Petty played over 30 minutes against the Bengal Tigers but with limited offensive output. Oats admitted the benching Petty experiment was a failure.
More troubling to Oats than Petty’s funk was LSU dominated the backboards 49-31 and scored 20 second-chance points to the Tide’s five.