Derrion Reid will miss Alabama basketball's matchup with Kentucky, while Mark Sears was also listed on the SEC's availability report.

Oats said he'd spoken to a longtime friend in the NBA who told him it's all down to getting back to fundamentals, including improvement in guarding one-on-one, boxing out, sprinting back and communicating. He added that leadership on that starts from the top down, including himself.

Oats said after the Auburn game that his squad talks about starts and ends to halves. Bruce Pearl's Tigers closed the first half of that game on a pivotal 7-0 run. Alabama did score the last points of the first half on Wednesday, though it was still behind by double digits going into the locker room.