On Monday night, Alabama Men's Basketball defeated the Memphis Tigers 96-88. However, the final score does not tell the full story, as it often doesn't, as Alabama took a 20-point lead into halftime of the contest before Memphis cut the lead to double digits late in the second half.

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Alabama head coach Nate Oats lamented his team's mindset and physicality level in the second half, discussing the issues with the media.

"There's a reason we play the exhibition a little bit so we can get exposed on what we need to work on," Oats said in his opening statement. "We definitely got exposed tonight a little bit. Our turnovers were not where they needed to be, and we got to do a better job taking care of the ball. Our defensive rebounding - our transition defense - got exposed in a bad way. They got all over the offensive boards [Memphis] had 23 O boards. Our transition - they had 36 fast-break points tonight - so we've got a lot of work to do before the regular season."

It wasn't all doom and gloom from Oats, however.

"I thought it was good we got some young guys, some freshmen got to play. Holloway's first year with us, he got to play a decent amount of minutes we thought with some other guys being out. Derrion Reid has been out a lot in Summer and Fall with an injury so he's a little bit rusty. But when you look at him, 24 minutes. We needed to get Cliff kind of used to our pace and our system a little bit more."

"We needed to get the new guys kind of used to how we play," Oats said. "We've got to be a lot better in a lot of areas. Super thankful Memphis agreed to do this for us, I'm glad we got to come up here to Huntsville, I think the crowd was good. Wish we had played a little better for them in the second half...Glad we could win, but definitely a lot to work on now."

Wyatt Fulton is the TIde 100.9 DME and Brand Manager, primarily covering Alabama Crimson Tide football and men's basketball. For more Crimson Tide coverage, follow Wyatt on X (Formerly known as Twitter) at @FultonW_.

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