Buzz is a much more humble and gracious coach than Pearl, too. Not sure what that matters.

Oats is absolutely a firebrand who is confident and even cocky, but he has no issues being gracious when he loses.

After loss to Auburn

quote:
“It was a great game, great environment. It wasn’t a great game, but the environment was great. Auburn was ready to go, and we weren’t. This was for first place. They came out and played like it was for first place.....They were better than us. They played harder. They out-rebounded us."

After loss to Tennessee

quote:
“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.....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."

After loss to Creighton

quote:
“That’s a tough loss. I mean, they’re a good team. We fought. We were in there definitely wasn’t one of our better shooting nights, but they didn’t shoot it great either. (Ryan) Kalkbrenner affected the rim in the second half. We were able to get downhill to finish at the rim a little bit better in the first half. We’re not doing enough to win against good teams right now, and Creighton’s a really good team...But they’re good. I mean, they do a good job defensively. They did a good job guarding the 3-point line. It’s our season-low in threes made. We didn’t shoot it great, and it was large part due to the way they guard. They kind of run you off the line and push down into Kalkbrenner. Our defensive end, we just weren’t quite good enough. We’ve got to do a better job guarding the ball ourself. I didn’t think we did a great job with that."

After loss to San Diego State last year

quote:
"San Diego State is a very good team. When you get to the Sweet 16, you know, all the teams are good at this point. You know, they're tough, physical, veteran group.....And they're a really good group with some veteran players. They definitely got experience, and they got down nine and came out and turned it right around. You've got to give them a lot of credit."

After loss to Texas A&M last year

quote:
“It’s another tough game. That’s four in a row we’ve had come down to the wire, coming off a hard-fought win Wednesday against Auburn. A&M made us play hard for this one, which we expected, and we just didn’t quite have enough. They were ready to go, we weren’t."

After loss to Gonzaga last year

quote:
“It was a good game. Happy everybody in Birmingham got to see a good game. It didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but that’s a quality team, though. Offensively, they were really good, and they were good enough on defense today to turn us over 21 times. Gonzaga’s been one of the best programs in the country for a lone time now. They’ve got really good players, and I thought our players battled with them for a lot of the game."

After loss to UConn last year

quote:
“It’s a tough loss. UConn’s obviously a really good team. It’s the first loss of the season, so you learn about yourself a little bit. I thought our first-half turnovers killed us, but we did a good job. I thought we showed a lot of fight getting back.....The good thing about losing to UConn is you get to face the No. 1 team in the country in two days (laughs). Shoot, they’re good. With the turnaround from Thursday to Friday, we didn’t touch the Michigan State game....I think the physicality of the game – obviously UConn’s one of the toughest teams in the country year in and year out. Coach Hurley does a great job. We didn’t handle the physicality well. Like you said, we’ve got four freshmen in the rotation playing pretty heavy minutes. We’ve just gotta do a better job. The coaching staff’s gotta do a better job prepping them for it. "

I mean, every loss is basically the other team is very good and our team has tons to figure out. That's like 2/3 of our losses the last 2 years and all of them are praising the other team - both in general and specific stuff - while noting all the specific stuff we have to improve on.

Shite, half the wins sound like that.

This post was edited on 2/8/24 at 12:22 pm