Tennessee didn't have much trouble taking down Alabama on Saturday.

Afterward, Tide head coach Nate Oats fielded questions from the media.

Here's everything he said on the Vols.

TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM

"That was as dominating a performance somebody has put on us in a long time around here. They’re good, they’re tough, they’re physical. We weren’t ready for it. I didn’t do a good enough job prepping them for their aggressiveness. 22 turnovers. They scored 23 points off our turnovers. Gave up 17 second-chance points. When you give up 40 points off turnovers and second-chance points, you're not going to win very many games. Give them a ton of credit. Coach (Rick) Barnes’ teams always play hard. They’re one of the best teams on defense this year and they just dominated us in a big way. And we've got to go back and figure it out, get a little tougher, take care of the ball a little bit better. And obviously, we weren’t great on defense. So, disappointing. The thing is, it’s one game. I told our guys we lost up here last year and still won the league. We have to get a lot tougher. They exposed some of our softness last year. I thought after this game we did get a lot tougher and played a lot better after we lost up here last year. So, hopefully, that same thing happens. We’ll see if some guys show some character and come back ready to play a little tougher brand of basketball."

"It’s impossible because you don’t have anybody on your team that plays as hard or is as quick as (Zakai) Zeigler. So all of a sudden, he’s up in you. You’re not used to it. We tried to tell the guys what it’s going to be like, tried to replicate it. Sometimes you've got to experience it, have it happen. Now, it would be nice if we could not just, I thought, to get down 27 at one point, didn’t show enough fight. I mean, you can’t replicate what Zeigler does, but you can still show a little bit more toughness than what we showed tonight. So, it’s hard to replicate. It's the whole team. It’s not just Zeigler. I mean, (Santiago) Vescovi gets into you. He got out and picked us. (Jahmai) Mashack's good. If you don’t guard, you don’t play for Coach Barnes. Period. They got five guys on the floor, they’re going to play hard and guard all the time and that’s why they’re good here."

"They got up into him. They pressured him. They took us out. They blew up screens when he’s off-ball. We couldn’t get him open off the ball very well. Their physicality bothers and then it is like they’re up into them and they’re denying passing lanes. Other guys aren’t getting open off screens and we just struggled a little bit. We've got to help him have a better plan but we just got to get tougher to be honest with you."

"That was an issue in the first half. He was a big problem. We were fortunate he got two fouls. We would’ve been down a whole lot more if they didn’t have three guys with two fouls in the first half and they couldn’t play for parts of the first half. I thought he was killing us. Like kind of come off those floppy actions, you know, they’d curl a little bit. He’d try not to switch it. Sometimes we were forced to switch, bury the guard. We didn’t do a good enough job getting our guy’s ready to play against (the Vols). Now, (Dalton) Knecht’s been killing everybody and he probably would’ve had 35 again tonight if this would’ve been a close game. They would’ve been going to him a lot more. In fact, he had 20 for most of the second half. Dalton kind of let his foot off the gas. He had 17 at the half. He’s had some second halves where he just had explosions here lately. So, we held him below what he’s been averaging the last three games. We didn’t do a very good job on him, either. He killed us when it mattered. So, between him and (Jonas) Aidoo. Shoot, (Jordan) Gainey played better than what he’s (done). To have a guy come off the bench and shoot it like he shot it tonight and he played great for them, too."

"Like I just said earlier, they’re kind of coming off those pin downs and floppies, curling in and burying it. The bigs kind of had to help a little bit because the guard was trying to chase the guards through him and then he would just kind of bury our bigs in there. He got deep post catches. They did a good job. We didn’t fight duck-ins very well, but some of that was probably needing to guard some of those actions a little bit better. Next time we play them we're going to have to get our guys a little better prepared for some of this stuff."

"I mean the first thing they did is they didn’t get beat off the dribble very much. When they did, they were still like right there on you where they weren’t clean and they just build up. They were not collapsing the defense, spraying it, getting kick out threes like we usually do. So, they weren’t helping off the shooters to begin with. When they did have to get to a rotation, which was rare, they just flew at you and they played hard. Played with effort. They fly around, so they fly at you and you put it on the floor, the next guy’s coming. So they did a great job. Coach Barnes he had good game plan. The best job anybody’s done on us defensively. So, we've got to do a better job getting ready for the next time we play them."

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