Nate Oats on Alabama basketball loss at Georgia: 'I’ve got to put the right guys on the floor '

When Alabama basketball loses a game it entered as a heavy favorite, there are no shortage of issues to dissect.

After the Crimson Tide lost 82-76 to Georgia on Tuesday at Stegeman Coliseum, Alabama coach Nate Oats immediately pointed to turnovers and effort.

Neither area was where it needed to be for Alabama (13-7, 4-4 SEC) to win the game.

"Turnovers were a major problem," Oats said. "The biggest problem was our energy, our effort. As a head coach, this stuff comes back on me. I’ve got to figure out how to put the right guys on the floor who care about their teammates and will play hard for them.

"I’ve obviously not done a great job of figuring out how to do that so far this year.”

Energy is not as easy to measure, but the turnovers are. Alabama gave the ball up 19 times against Georgia (6-14, 1-6), 10 of which happened in the second half.

"Some of them, I thought were careless," Oats said. "We weren’t locked into the game like we needed to be."

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Across the board, turnovers littered the stat sheet. Jaden Shackelford had five. James Rojas had three. JD Davison, Charles Bediako, Keon Ellis, Noah Gurley and Jahvon Quinerly each had two.

"It’s just everybody," Oats said. "It’s not like (Georgia) forced a ton. They only had five steals. There were a lot of unforced turnovers. Throwing the ball out. To me, when you just lose yourself in the game, a lot of that stuff takes care of itself."

Oats called the turnovers mindboggling. He said he would need to look at them closer on the film, but either way, he knows they happened in a variety of problematic ways.

"We've got to clean them up," Oats said. "It's hard to win a game with 19 turnovers."

The team's effort will also need to be better. Oats said he saw the effort Alabama needs at times against Missouri last Saturday, but not enough against Georgia.

So, the Bulldogs ultimately emerged with the victory as Alabama lost its fourth SEC game in eight matchups.

"The consistent effort for 40 minutes," Oats said, "just hasn’t been there frequent enough this year.”

Contact Alabama reporter Nick Kelly: nkelly@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @_NickKelly

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Nate Oats on Alabama loss to Georgia: Biggest problem was energy and effort