Why Nate Oats Isn't Leaning on Revenge, Motivation for Rematch with Clemson in Elite Eight

LOS ANGELES — Alabama went over a year without losing a home game at Coleman Coliseum. The team to snap the streak? The same opponent the 4-seed Crimson Tide will face in Saturday night's Elite Eight matchup: the 6-seed Clemson Tigers.

"I think as a competitor if you've got some pride, you got embarrassed on your home court earlier in the year," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said. "And you've got a chance to redeem it on a neutral floor. I think that would be a little extra motivation for you right there."

Clemson beat Alabama 85-77 back in December as part of the ACC/SEC Challenge. The Crimson Tide shot just 34 percent from the floor in the first matchup, and struggled on defense. Clemson's PJ Hall got what he wanted, with 21 points and nine rebounds. Starting guards Joseph Girard III and Chase Hunter finished with 16 and 15 points respectively and Ian Schieffelin grabbed 14 rebounds for the Tigers.

Mark Sears had 23 points for Alabama in the previous meeting. Aaron Estrada added 16 points, but he was just 6-for-16 from the floor.

"I think as us being competitors, there's definitely a revenge factor," Estrada said Friday. "Nobody wants to lose to a team twice, especially who you think you can beat. So I think that's just going to add even more fuel to us, and it's going to make us play harder."

This will be the sixth time this season that Alabama faces a repeat opponent. The Tide swept Mississippi State and LSU in two meetings apiece, split two games with Auburn, went 1-2 against Florida and 0-2 against Tennessee. In most of the rematches, even the second loss to the Volunteers, Oats saw improvement from the first game to the second. (The losses to Florida and Auburn would be the exceptions.)

"So there's some of the times we made better improvements from game 1 to game 2," Oats said. "We're definitely going to need to be the one to make improvements this game because they were significantly better than we were at our place.

"We didn't handle their physicality well. I think we're playing better, handling physicality more. North Carolina was a physical team. I thought we did a good job handling that one."

But according to Oats, at this point in the tournament with a Final Four berth on the line, motivation alone isn't going to be enough.

"Clemson's also trying to make their first Final Four, I think they'll be extra motivated," Oats said. "You can't just rely on being motivated because the other team is going to be motivated too. We have to be locked in a scouting report, focused, detail oriented -- things we've been good here at the tournament maybe we lacked during the course of the year at different times."

Oats said he's glad Alabama played Clemson earlier this season so that his players already know the level of physicality the Tigers play with. Alabama forward Grant Nelson said the first game gave him a good understanding of how Clemson plays.

"I love playing a team that we already played because we can just go back to our old film and get better at things we didn’t do really well," Sears said.

However, Nelson also knows that Alabama's a different team from that first matchup. For example, Mohamed Wague was in the starting lineup for the Tide that day in December. It was just Alabama's seventh game of the season, so the transfers were still getting used to the system and style of play, and the freshmen were still adjusting to the physicality of high-major college basketball games.

Nelson acknowledged that the team didn't follow the scouting report well in the first meeting, especially among the bigs. But he feels like the way Alabama has been playing defense over the last three NCAA Tournament games will carry over into Saturday's game.

Alabama (24-11) and Clemson (24-11) were on silimar trajectories coming into the NCAA Tournament. Both teams got bounced in the opening games of their conference tournament by double digits. But now, both teams are looking to make history.

The two programs have squared off in the College Football Playoff multiple times and traded national titles in the sport from 2015-2018. No one has played in the CFP more than Alabama and Clemson. Yet, neither school has reached the Final Four in men's basketball. That changes Saturday at 7:49 p.m. in Los Angeles.

"This would be the biggest win in the history of Alabama basketball if we can pull it off," Oats said. "And I think our players understand the enormity of the game. And I think their preparation, their effort will match their understanding of how important this game is."