“I was really frustrated,” Oats said. “We want to be tougher than the teams we play, and I feel like we got — I mean one of the areas you can look at a stat sheet and see how hard you play is rebounding, and they destroyed us on the glass. So I know we play small sometimes, but I didn’t think that was the issue as much as it was we just didn’t give an effort when we needed to.”

Saturday night, Alabama lacked much of the qualities that have come define it during Oats’ first year at the helm. The Crimson Tide was outrebounded 45-33, including 22-3 on offensive boards. Kansas State forced 16 turnovers which it turned into 18 points. The Wildcats also put up 31 more shots than Alabama, including seven more from beyond the arc.

Given the ups and downs of this season, Oats isn’t in a position to turn his nose up at a win. But this one was far from ideal by his standards.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Nate Oats sat behind the mic, his arms crossed and a stern scowl sketched across his face. The Alabama basketball coach had just seen his team pull out a 77-74 win over Kansas State, the Crimson Tide’s fourth straight victory and its first of the season by fewer than five points.

Only two Alabama players recorded offensive rebounds on the night. Jaylen Forbes grabbed one over his four minutes on the court, while Galin Smith tallied a pair over 15 minutes off the bench. By contrast, Kansas State forward Makol Mawien tallied seven of his 12 rebounds on the offensive end.

Sure, Alabama (12-7, 4-2 in the SEC) was able to pull out the win Saturday inside of Coleman Coliseum. However, Oats knows his team can't put up a similar performance when it travels to Baton Rouge, La., to take on LSU (15-4, 6-0) on Wednesday.

The Tigers entered Saturday third in the SEC in rebounding averaging 40.1 boards per game. While Alabama’s poor performance against Kansas State didn’t serve as a good indication, the Crimson Tide entered the day leading the conference averaging 41.9 rebounds.

“I thought Herb (Jones) crashed. Some of our other guys just didn’t give an effort. So we’ve got to get that fixed. LSU crashes the boards hard. I’ve watched a half dozen games of theirs already, and we’re going to have a problem if we don’t start rebounding the ball a lot better than we did today.”

To Alabama’s credit, it was a bit short-handed Saturday night. Forward Javian Davis played just four minutes while recovering from a bone bruise in his knee. Meanwhile John Petty Jr., the teams leading rebounder with 7.3 per game, picked up his fourth foul with 16:17 as he was given a technical for arguing with the referee. The junior guard later fouled out with 55 seconds remaining.

“I guess they said he rolled the ball at the referee,” Oats said. “I didn’t really see it to be honest with you. The ref and John both told me that’s what happened. Apparently he rolled it too hard and with an attitude, I’m guessing. So, I didn’t see it live.

“That’s definitely not something we want to do. If the coach gets a T, I cant foul out of the game with five fouls. I can’t get a second one, but for him to get a T to pick up his fourth is a big deal. And that’s early in the second half, and we needed him. He’s got to learn from that.”

Oats also took on some of the blame himself. One of the few glowing positives from the coach’s postgame press conference came when talking about Smith, who finished with 3 points and four rebounds while adding some much-needed grit down low late in the game.

“In hindsight, he maybe needed to play more,” Oats said. “He plays hard. We tried to get Javian some minutes, probably wasn’t quite ready. Maybe should have just played Galin all those minutes. Galin’s a tough kid, and our rebounding numbers are up when he’s in the game. I thought there late when we needed stops, he came up with some big rebounds. We’re going to need him to play really big for us at LSU on Wednesday.”

Alabama entered Saturdays’ game ranked No. 330 of 353 teams in KenPom.com’s “luck rating,” a reminder that earlier this season games like the one against Kansas State might not have gone the Crimson Tide’s way. Oats and Alabama can take solace in that. However, expect any form of celebration to be short-lived.

“We’ll take the win right now and hopefully learn,” Oats said. “And guys will be mature enough to know that we got to fix a lot of things even though we won. Proud of the guys for the win, but we have a lot to get fixed here before Wednesday.”